Oblateness of Achernar

[JackHiggins]

Heres something I saw earlier-

Stars are commonly thought to be round, but astronomers have long known this is never quite true. Even Earth, owing to its rotation, bulges a bit at the midsection.

New observations, however, have detected the flattest star ever.

The fast-spinning star is about 50 percent wider at its equator than if measured from pole to pole. The standard model of stellar composition and rotation -- which assumes solid-body rotation and a mass concentration at the center of the star -- can't account for the extreme out-of-round shape. Researchers said the finding presents "an unprecedented challenge for theoretical astrophysics."

The star, called Achernar, is about six times more massive than the Sun. It sits 145 light-years away in the Southern Hemisphere constellation Eridanus, the River.

The observations were led by Armando Domiciano de Souza at the Laboratoire Univ. d'Astrophysique de Nice in France, using the European Southern Observatory's new VLT Interferometer at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. The results will be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

And here's their diagram


I don't suppose there's any way to modify the star database to show this is there..?

[chris]

Heres something I saw earlier-
I don't suppose there's any way to modify the star database to show this is there..?

No, not yet . . . At some point, it will be possible to override the default appearance of a star, but I haven't had the time to implement that yet.

--Chris

[ElPelado]

maybe we can just remove it from the data base, and put model, like a nebula.

[granthutchison]

Or try this cosmetic fix:

Code: Select all

"Achernar" "Achernar"
{
   Radius 8000000
   Oblateness 0.333
   Texture "bstar.jpg"

   Emissive true

   EllipticalOrbit {
      SemiMajorAxis 1e-12
      Period 0.0007
   }
}

Grant

[Calculus]

This is the same trick I used to correct the sun's Obliquity:

"Sun" "Sol"
{
Texture "sun.jpg"
#Texture "gstar.jpg"
Emissive true
Radius 696000 #celestia Sol : 695705.371

EllipticalOrbit {
Period 1e10
SemiMajorAxis 1e-10
Eccentricity 0.00
Inclination 0.00
}

# RotationPeriod : the actual rotation rate varies with latitude L as: ( 14.37 - 2.33 sin2 L - 1.56 sin4 L ) deg/day
RotationPeriod 609.6 # 601.25h @0 deg or 609.6h @16 deg lat or 626.12947 @27.596918 deg lat
Obliquity 7.25
EquatorAscendingNode 75.62
}