According to a team of astronomers from Australia and Europe reporting in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, IRAS 15445-5449 – an old star in the southern constellation Triangulum Australe about 23,000 light-years away – has begun to push out a jet of particles that glow with radio waves.
This image shows a jet of energetic particles emitting radio waves, shown in pink, coming from the star IRAS 15445-5449. Dusty material around the star, shown in green, was imaged with ESO’s VLT Interferometer. The star itself is hidden by dust. Image credit: A. Pérez-Sánchez /ATCA / CSIRO / E. Lagadec / ESO.
“A few old stars are known to have jets, but this is the first one where the radio waves tell us the jet is held together by a strong magnetic field. That’s a clue to what makes these jets switch on,” explained senior author Dr Jessica Chapman of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science.
Dr Chapman’ team used CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array to detect the radio waves from the IRAS 15445-5449′s jets.
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