News Photos
Caption: An artist's time series shows two stars colliding to form a blue straggler star. The two stars begin in the top left of the image on a collision course, perhaps as a result of a gravitational dance with a third star in a star cluster. During the collision, the two stars merge to form a new star: a blue straggler. This more massive, rapidly rotating and bluer star is seen in the bottom left of the image, partnered with the third star that participated in the initial dance, leaving a newly formed binary star containing the blue straggler. Crashing stars, an idea once thought far-fetched by astronomers, emerged as one possibility for the formation of blue stragglers from observations by UW-Madison astronomers.
Illustration: Barry Roal Carlsen
Date: December 2009
High-resolution JPEG
Photo use
Photographs are available to media organizations and University of Wisconsin-Madison departments for news, editorial and public relations uses, both print and electronic, that are directly related to UW-Madison. They are NOT available for generic use. For university-related use -- including textbooks, commercial products or advertising -- please contact Bryce Richter, photographer, University Communications, (608) 262-7411 or brichter2@wisc.edu.
Published photos must include a credit ("photographer's name/University of Wisconsin-Madison" or "courtesy of"). The specific credit and other details are also embedded in the digital file, which can be viewed by using Photoshop and selecting "file>file info."
None of these images may be modified, altered or used in any way that changes or misrepresents the photograph's content or overall context.