By Ana Verayo, | November 17, 2016
The star Kepler 11145123 is the roundest natural object ever measured in the universe. (Mark A. Garlick/Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research)
Astronomers have detected the most perfect star in the universe. Scientists describe this star, which is located 50,000 light years away from Earth, as the most perfectly round cosmic object.
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Stars and planets push back their stellar mass toward their equatorial region, thanks to their rotational velocity. This means that the faster they spin, the stronger the centrifugal forces are, thus making these objects flat.
Astronomers calculate a cosmic object's relative flatness by measuring the difference between the radius from its polar regions to its equator.
This newly discovered perfect star known as Kepler 11145123 rotates in an extremely slow manner, with a difference of three kilometers. The sun completes a full rotation in 27 days with a difference of 10 kilometers while Earth has a difference of 21 kilometers, making it more flat.
In this new study, astronomers from the Max Planck Society for Solar System Research and the University of Göttingen were able to obtain measurements of Kepler 11145123 and its equatorial and polar radii by studying its oscillations for four years.
The new observations revealed that this unusually slow rotating perfect star has two oscillations emanating from different latitudes. These shifts in frequency between its lower and higher latitude oscillations revealed a radii difference of three kilometers.
According to the author of the study, Laurent Gizon from the Max Planck Society for Solar System Research and the University of Göttingen, this means that Kepler 11145123 is the roundest natural cosmic object ever measured - making it even rounder than the sun.
This roundness is not only due to the perfect star's rotational velocity, but astronomers also suggest that its lower latitude magnetic field plays a crucial role in keeping this perfect round shape. These new findings bring to light innovative ways of measuring the magnetism of distant stars, just by observing their radii differences.
Gizon added that this new technique of measuring stars that are observed by the Kepler Space Telescope could provide insight into how faster rotation and a stronger magnetic field can change the shape of a star.
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