A pair of stars in our galaxy is revealing how light pushes around matter. It’s the first time anyone has directly seen how the pressure of light from stars changes the flow of dust in space.
Such radiation pressure influences how dust clears from the regions near young stars and guides the formation of gas clouds around dying stars (SN: 9/22/20). The dust pattern surrounding a stellar pair 5,600 light-years away in the Cygnus constellation is providing a rare laboratory to observe the effect in action, astronomer Yinuo Han and colleagues report in the Oct. 13 Nature.
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