美国宇航局发现了罕见的双星系统

美国宇航局发现了罕见的双星系统

Scientists used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation’s Karl F. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to spot the double, or binary, star system. The system is located in Terzan 5, a dense cluster of stars about 20,000 light-years from Earth.

科学家们利用美国宇航局钱德拉X射线天文台，和美国国家科学基金会卡尔F詹斯基超大阵列(VLA)发现了这颗双星或双星系统。该系统位于泰山5号，一个密集的星团，距离地球约20000光年。

A light-year, which measures distance in space, equals about 6 trillion miles.

一光年是测量空间距离的单位，相当于6万亿英里。

NASA has compared the system to a cosmic “Jekyll and Hyde.”

美国宇航局将这个系统比作宇宙中的“杰基尔和海德”。

“Using nearly a decade and a half worth of Chandra data, researchers noticed that a stellar duo behaved like one type of object before switching its identity, and then returning to its original state after a few years,” NASA said in a statement. “This is a rare example of a star system changing its behavior in this way.”

美国航天局在一份声明中说：“利用钱德拉近15年的数据，研究人员注意到一对恒星在转换身份前表现得像一种物体，几年后又回到原来的状态。”。“这是一个罕见的恒星系统以这种方式改变其行为的例子。”

The double-star system, Terzan 5 CX1, consists of a neutron star in close orbit around a star similar to the Sun, which possesses less mass, according to NASA.

美国航天局称，双星系统Terzan 5 CX1由一颗中子星组成，它围绕着一颗类似太阳、但质量较小的恒星运行。

The rare double star system is just the latest in recent cosmic discoveries. In a separate project, a 77-year-old amateur astronomer helped discover a rare galaxy double nucleus.

罕见的双星系统只是最近宇宙发现的最新发现。在另一个项目中，一位77岁的业余天文学家帮助发现了一个罕见的星系双核。

NASA also recently announced that a 17-year-old summer intern made an incredible planet discovery.

美国宇航局最近还宣布，一名17岁的暑期实习生发现了一颗令人难以置信的行星。