The Smallest Star Ever Observed Has Been Discovered

Space research, which continues unabated, enables new discoveries about the depths of the universe every day. A new study published recently also smallest star ever observed It shows that it was discovered by scientists.

TMTS J0526B This star, named “subdwarf” type, was discovered by an international research team from Tsinghua University in China. The findings were published on Nature Astronomy.

J0526B is only 7 times larger than Earth, smaller than Jupiter and Saturn

*An artist’s rendering of the TMTS J0526 star system.

J0526B, discovered by a team of scientists from China, Australia, the USA and Europe, is part of a binary star system. Found via Tsinghua University’s Ma Huateng Survey Telescope (TMTS), this subdwarf is visible from Earth. It is 2,760 light years away.

Its size is really small compared to the stars. According to the study, J0526B is only from Earth 7 floors bigger. this too It is smaller than Jupiter and Saturn means. The researchers add that it has one-third the mass of the Sun and burns helium at a surface temperature of 2,000 degrees Celsius.

We said that J0526B is part of a binary star system. Another member of this system is a larger white dwarf named J0526A. Two stars around each other rotates every 20 minutes. The interesting thing is that scientists cannot observe J0526A directly. However, in their statement, they said that this big star is there thanks to the effects of the gravitational force on J0526B. It is even said that this attraction is so strong that it causes J0526B to take an egg-like shape.

Scientists think that the discovery will shed light on new information about the formation of hot subdwarf stars in the universe. They also add that this star matches the predictions of Chinese researchers 20 years ago about such small stars in binary systems. Those researchers predicted that tiny stars like J0526B could form through mass changes within binary systems.

The smallest star before J0526B, located 600 light-years from Earth EBLM J0555-57Ab was. This small red dwarf, announced in a study published in 2017 and led by the University of Cambridge, was slightly larger than Saturn.