Colossal tail trails dying star
Of course anyone who loves C.S. Lewis knows that stars don’t die, they retire and become magicians.
A distant star that hurtles through space at extraordinary speeds has a huge, comet-like tail trailing in its wake, astronomers say.
The appendage, which measures a colossal 13 light years in length, was spotted by Nasa’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer (Galex) space telescope.
The researchers said that nothing like it had ever been spotted around a star.
They believe the star, known as Mira, will help them to study what happens as stars meet their demise.
Mark Seibert, a co-author of the paper, which was published in the journal Nature, and a scientist at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, said: “This is an utterly new phenomenon to us, and we are still in the process of understanding the physics involved.”
“Of course anyone who loves C.S. Lewis knows that stars don’t die, they retire and become magicians.”
LOVE IT!