July 7, 2020

Illustration of the shock fron in the Eta Carinae system (Image courtesy DESY, Science Communication Lab)

An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” reports the detection of extremely energetic gamma-ray emissions from the Eta Carinae system. A team of researchers coordinated by the German national nuclear physics research center DESY used the HESS telescope system to detect those gamma rays and prove that they were generated by the collision of stellar winds from the two blue giant stars that make up this binary system. Various models have been proposed, and a study published in a second article on “Astronomy & Astrophysics” offers some evaluations that follow a reanalysis of data collected over time by various instruments.