by A team of German astronomers, led by Professor Klaus Werner of the University of Tübingen, have discovered a strange new type of star covered in the by-product of helium burning.
It is possible that the stars might have been formed by a rare stellar merger event.
The results are published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
While normal stars have surfaces composed of hydrogen and helium, the stars discovered by Werner and his colleagues have their surfaces covered with carbon and oxygen, the ashes of helium burning—an exotic composition for a star.
The situation becomes more puzzling as the new stars have temperatures and radii that indicate they are still burning helium in their cores—a property typically seen in more evolved stars than those observed by Werner and his team in this study.
Source
It is possible that the stars might have been formed by a rare stellar merger event.
The results are published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
While normal stars have surfaces composed of hydrogen and helium, the stars discovered by Werner and his colleagues have their surfaces covered with carbon and oxygen, the ashes of helium burning—an exotic composition for a star.
The situation becomes more puzzling as the new stars have temperatures and radii that indicate they are still burning helium in their cores—a property typically seen in more evolved stars than those observed by Werner and his team in this study.
Source
