R-Aquirii: The Symbiotic Star System with a Flare! (Alex Woronow)

R-Aquirii: The Symbiotic Star System with a Flare!

R-Aquirii: The Symbiotic Star System with a Flare!

Capture:
OTA: CDK24
Camera: Moravian 61000
    Pixel Resolution: 0.3"
Observatory: Heaven's Mirror
Date of Capture: Aug '24
Date of Processing: Aug '24

Exposures Used:
Broadband: 2.6h
Narrowband:11.6h
Image Width: 18; 26" (the full-nebula image)

Processing Tools:
1.    Commercial: PixInsight, Topaz, Radiant Photo, PhotoDirector, 3DLUT Creator
2.    Pixinsight Addons: NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator
3.    My Scripts: NB_Assistant, AC_Restar, Subframe Weighting Tool (w/ J. Hunt), ColorTweaker, StarTweaker

Target Description:
This "star," R-Aquarii, is actually a binary system. It is labeled a symbiotic system because matter transfers from one member, the red-giant star, to the other, a white dwarf star. The red giant is near the end of its life, and as it expands, the gravitational pull of the dense white dwarf strips away some of the outer halo of the red giant. At some point, the white dwarf's accumulated gas becomes unstable, and an explosion sends it off into a loop around the star system. Image B shows part of the inner (most recent) loop with the pair of stars at its center. The pair is not resolved; their actual separation is around 55milli arcseconds.

In addition to the loops currently being generated, when the white dwarf died, it undoubtedly did so violently. That may have sourced some of the fainter extended nebula. One speculation is that the explosion occurred in 1074 BP and was observed by Japanese astronomers.

The primary star, the red giant, is a variable star with an elevated range of brightness, from a dim 12.4 magnitude to an almost visible to the naked eye 5.2 magnitude. That's a change in brightness by a factor of 750x.

Target Statistics:
Distance: 700 ky
Pixel Span at Target: 1.2B km

Alex Woronow

Final
Original
B

B

Title: Processed to better reveal the "inner loop" and the binary star that created this inner-stellar art.

Uploaded: ...

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape
Artificial satellite

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	10514509
PixInsight job	CNNXM0DSBKMCJMCK4HCUR9G7ZY7LSD6A
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	23h43m49s.516
RA (top/left)	23h44m40s.542
RA (top/right)	23h43m49s.300
RA (bottom/right)	23h42m58s.327
RA (bottom/left)	23h43m49s.686

Dec (center)	-15°16′52″.38
Dec (top/left)	-15°18′06″.76
Dec (top/right)	-15°04′28″.80
Dec (bottom/right)	-15°15′37″.88
Dec (bottom/left)	-15°29′16″.10

AstroBin

AstroBin

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):