Eps 1620: The lonely star
— The too lazy to register an account podcast
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| Content creation: | GPT-3.5, |
Host
Allison Lowe
Podcast Content
Face southwards on a cool fall night, you see an area of the sky, lower along the horizon, which seems strangely devoid of brilliant stars. There is, however, a bright star in their midst, and if you go out around 10pm or 11pm and look south, you may be able to glimpse it, low along the southern horizon. Its name is Fomalhaut, and is an alpha star in the constellation of the Southern Fish, Piscis Austrinus.
Fomalhaut is believed to be a young star, just 250 million years old, compared with our Sun, which is estimated to be 5 billion years old. The total lifespan of the sun is about 11 billion years, so both the sun and the one bright star in its group are effectively middle-aged. It is a long way away from its host star, some 115 astronomical units, meaning it takes the planet 875 years to orbit around Fomalhaut.
We have known for some time that the one bright star in their group is surrounded by disks of gas and dust , the sort of thing that planets are made out of, and astronomers announced in 2008 that they had found an candidate for an extrasolar planet buried within a disk of debris. One is an orange-colored dwarf star some 1 light-year from the brightest star among them, while another is a red dwarf , the most common kind of star in the Universe, about 2.5 light-years from Fomalhaut A). The exception, of course, is one bright star among them.
In the great stretch of the heavens between the bright stars of Antares to the west and Sirius to the east, between Antares to the west, and Sirius to the west, lies only one bright star worth noting, that of Fomalhaut. Fomalhaut is also called the Lonely Star of the Fall, for Fomalhaut is the only bright star in the evening sky during this time of the year. Because, to Northern observers, Fomalhaut has no other bright stars in its immediate vicinity, it is sometimes called the Lonely Star of Fall.
The companion star of Fomalhaut is gravitationally bound by its larger companion to within 0.91 light-years. In real terms, another companion is around 2.5 light years away from Fomalhaut itself, but it is amazing that these stars are still isolated enough at their respective positions in the galaxy that they are gravitationally bound, despite the large distance between them. Low and visible above the southern horizon, this beautiful white star is a solitary view on a fall night in the north.
These two large stars looked down at the small star, laughing so loudly the heavens quivered with laughter. The little star looked up into the atmosphere and at the cycles of weather, and immediately understood how much effort God had gone through to make the lives of humans living on Earth comfortable. Coming from the great emptyness and barrenness of space, and looking upon the abundant life on earth, the little star understood instantly the care and thought and planning that God had taken in creating such an amazing planet.
It was during these next couple weeks, when the little star, listening to their conversations, came to understand exactly how vital its mission was. One day, Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, was going about his very important job as Sirius, when he noticed the little star. I would known it, the moment when I looked out the viewing port and saw no Earth shining beneath me, only a dark, hollow blackness of space filled with only a handful of lone stars.
It was silent in outer space, astrids neighbors were light years away; too far to have any conversations, much less become friends. The humans rested in the warmth of day, with the sun too warm and bright to allow them to see stars. In less than an hour, they had set up camp, packed up everything and were following the stars, singing with praises to God.
Astrid profusely thanked Halley, and before the comet was even out of sight, Astrid was already laughing about silly lines shared by her new friends. She was a pretty star, glinting so gracefully she was admired from afar by a swarm of animals, and humans, and alien creatures from planets well beneath her, but truth was, she was alone. If I imagined hard enough, perhaps I would have seen Honey, gazing heavenward, seeing if she could glimpse Libra passing overhead.
The stations computers have found enough known stars to triangulate where we are; right where we are supposed to be, two weeks after our last measurements were taken.