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Let's Welcome HR4796 into existence!
January 2, 2012 at 9:26 pm
(This post was last modified: January 2, 2012 at 9:27 pm by TheDarkestOfAngels.)
It's a spectral class A0 V / M2.5 V!
Actually, its about ten million years old, but it's so young and we just got to meet it. You can't help but call it "pwesious" and showerit with affection.
Isn't it adorable?
![[Image: subaru_hr4796_ring.jpg]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=blogs.discovermagazine.com%2Fbadastronomy%2Ffiles%2F2012%2F01%2Fsubaru_hr4796_ring.jpg)
(It is, in fact, staring into your soul. It's an infra-red image and it's the only reason we can see the surrounding disc.)
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
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RE: Let's Welcome HR4796 into existence!
January 2, 2012 at 9:30 pm
I was about to say, look at how red shifted it is...
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RE: Let's Welcome HR4796 into existence!
January 2, 2012 at 9:33 pm
(This post was last modified: January 2, 2012 at 10:20 pm by Jackalope.)
(January 2, 2012 at 9:30 pm)reverendjeremiah Wrote: I was about to say, look at how red shifted it is...
It wouldn't be red-shifted - being in our relative local neighborhood.
Incidentally, for those wondering what an A0 V class star looks like up close, Vega (Alpha Lyrae) is also A0 V class and is a prototype for the class. A0 stars are ordinary main-sequence stars, ~1.4-2.1 x the mass of our sun, generally white / blue-white in color, are hot, bright and have significantly shorter lifespans than our sun. They're considered dwarf stars (like our sun), and are white, but are not white dwarfs.
Unfortunately, in the northern hemisphere, Vega is best positioned for viewing in the summer. Gamma Ursae Majoris is also a prototypical A0 V class star. It is unfortunately much more distant than Vega, thus much dimmer, despite being more luminous due to it's mass.
Added: This newborn has it's own Wikipedia page. It's twins, though not identical - it's sibling is a 0.3 solar mass red dwarf.
Unfortunately, those that want to view this infant star are going to need to be in the southern hemisphere with dark skies and good sharp eyes or a telescope or binoculars as it's near the naked-eye visibility limit (magnitude 5.8) for very dark skies.
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RE: Let's Welcome HR4796 into existence!
January 4, 2012 at 11:56 am
And here we are, basking at it, in our pale blue madhouse! 
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RE: Let's Welcome HR4796 into existence!
January 4, 2012 at 12:04 pm
Looks like my endoscopy.
Best regards,
Leo van Miert
Horsepower is how hard you hit the wall --Torque is how far you take the wall with you
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RE: Let's Welcome HR4796 into existence!
January 4, 2012 at 12:20 pm
(January 2, 2012 at 9:30 pm)reverendjeremiah Wrote: I was about to say, look at how red shifted it is...
That's just the color of the near infrared filter used to capture the image.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
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RE: Let's Welcome HR4796 into existence!
January 4, 2012 at 12:48 pm
It looks like a booger I picked out of my nose last night.
And at first I was like HOLY CRAP that is red shifted hard, and just after I posted it I was like "DAMN! Its probably infrared picture...I look like a dumbass now"
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RE: Let's Welcome HR4796 into existence!
January 4, 2012 at 2:18 pm
(January 4, 2012 at 12:48 pm)reverendjeremiah Wrote: It looks like a booger I picked out of my nose last night.
And at first I was like HOLY CRAP that is red shifted hard, and just after I posted it I was like "DAMN! Its probably infrared picture...I look like a dumbass now"
Don't beat yourself up. We all have moments like that.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
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RE: Let's Welcome HR4796 into existence!
January 4, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Things like this is why I love the massive overlap between atheists and physicists.
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RE: Let's Welcome HR4796 into existence!
January 4, 2012 at 5:32 pm
(January 4, 2012 at 3:15 pm)tobie Wrote: Things like this is why I love the massive overlap between atheists and physicists.
???
the physics I took were all electrical based
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