'Seven Sisters' Distance Controversy Solved by Radio Telescopes
Paula Marie Navarra | | Aug 30, 2014 02:34 PM EDT |
Radio Telescopes were used by astronomers to resolve the controversy over the distance of the "Seven Sisters", a star cluster located in the Taurus constellation.
Astronomers have always been baffled about the formation and evolution of the Seven Sisters star cluster, otherwise called the Pleiades.
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Carl Melis from the University of California said that physical characteristics of the Plaeiades Stars challenge general facts about star formation and evolution
Other astronomers that used the Hipparcos satellite believe that some unknown theory in physics is at work in the formation and evolution of Pleiades.
To find out the truth about this, the researchers used different global network of radio telescopes, like the William Gordon Telescope, Effelsberg Radio Telescope and Very Long Baseline Array (10 Radio Telescopes extending from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands).
Amy Miouduszewski from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory said that using these telescopes, they created the equivalent of an Earth-size telescope that has the ability to calculate accurate positions measurements.
For a year and a half, astronomers used these telescopes to observe the Pleiades stars that keep shifting because of the Earth's revolution around the Sun.
They found out that Pleiades was approximately 443 light years away which is one percent shy from the 392 light years that was initially reported by the Hippacros satellite.
According to the researchers, the reason for the error of the Hippacros satellite in measuring the distance of Earth to the Pleiades remains unknown.
Mark Reid from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said that radio-telescope system that were used to measure the distance of Pleiades will be crucial for checking Gaia's measurements.
Gaia is space craft launched in December 2013 that was tasked to measurement the distances of one million stars.
Melis believe that they've used the different radio telescopes found all over the world to answer the long standing debate about the distance of Pleiades from Earth.
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