Stellar magnetic fields directly imaged for the first time

Star Keeps Magnetic Lock on Its Big Brother -- Berardelli 2010 (114): 3
-- ScienceNOW
"In today's issue of Nature, a team of astronomers reports a
breakthrough. They collected images of the magnetic field generated by
one of the stars in the Algol system, located about 93 light-years away.
The two stars in the system--one about three times more massive than the
sun and the other a little less massive--are so close to each other that
one orbit takes only 3 days. The smaller star is the source of the
magnetic field, and even though that field is about 1000 times stronger
than the sun's, imaging it still required two arrays of radiotelescopes,
plus two extra dishes, to detect the signals generated by magnetic
fields. One array stretches from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands, whereas
the other occupies an expanse of the New Mexico desert, and the
individual dishes sit in West Virginia and Germany. "
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi...ull/2010/114/3

On Jan 16, 4:55*pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:
Star Keeps Magnetic Lock on Its Big Brother -- Berardelli 2010 (114): 3
-- ScienceNOW
"In today's issue of Nature, a team of astronomers reports a
breakthrough. They collected images of the magnetic field generated by
one of the stars in the Algol system, located about 93 light-years away.
The two stars in the system--one about three times more massive than the
sun and the other a little less massive--are so close to each other that
one orbit takes only 3 days. The smaller star is the source of the
magnetic field, and even though that field is about 1000 times stronger
than the sun's, imaging it still required two arrays of radiotelescopes,
plus two extra dishes, to detect the signals generated by magnetic
fields. One array stretches from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands, whereas
the other occupies an expanse of the New Mexico desert, and the
individual dishes sit in West Virginia and Germany. "http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2010/114/3

Unlike our Sun which bursts up sometimes, the mentioned star has a
constant
sun burst, an ongoing electromagnetic discharge. The large sun caused
the
small sun orbiting it to become electric, which is a process of
constant friction,
a chaos of internal tides, wrong direction of orbit, etc.

gb wrote:
Unlike our Sun which bursts up sometimes, the mentioned star has a
constant
sun burst, an ongoing electromagnetic discharge. The large sun caused
the
small sun orbiting it to become electric, which is a process of
constant friction,
a chaos of internal tides, wrong direction of orbit, etc.

I think it's just easier to maintain a constant magnetic field between
two magnetized objects, than within a single magnetized object. The two
objects exchanging magnetic information with each other regulate
themselves to each other, whereas a single object's magnetic field would
go up and down due to internal turbulence conditions.

Even in our solar system, the Sun itself might benefit from some level
of magnetic regulation by exchanging magnetic fields with its planets
like Earth, and especially Jupiter and Saturn.

Yousuf Khan