Mysterious Red Shape on Google Earth

[Willis666]

I was looking around the skymap on google earth, and I saw a strange red shape, so I zoomed on it and found this, It looks like some sort of star and a red thing shooting some jet, but I have no clue, never seen anything like this in any of my books.

 

[Fewmet]

Can you find it again and get its coordinates? Or at least say what constellation it is in?

 

[russ_watters]

Or see if Google labels it...

 

[Fewmet]

Or see if Google labels it...

True. Some features are on "tours" and so are labeled. The RA and DEC should be at the bottom of the screen for any point (unless that varies with version). Just knowing the constellation should help pin it down, as well.

If Willis666 just came across it, though, I can only speculate from the symmetry and the apparent jets...

 

[Willis666]

Or see if Google labels it...

No labels. I tried to find it again but I couldnt, I had it saved, but that was on a different computer.

 

[russ_watters]

No labels. I tried to find it again but I couldnt, I had it saved, but that was on a different computer.

Try under "layers".

It may just be poor rendering. See attached.

 

[firavia]

isnt that a pulsar ?

 

[Arch2008]

Well you have several features apparent. You have two jets, one red-shifted (pointed away from us) and one blue-shifted, where the ejecta is traveling towards us. The red blob at the left bottom has a visible dark break which is normally cooler dust that blocks light. Both of the red blobs could be ionized dust blown off of a star in polar opposite directions by magnetic forces. Large stars sometimes do this when they grow so large that their surface gravity is zero. Their outer layers then “fluff off” gradually and they may lose the mass of the Sun every few million years. The central star becomes obscured in a cloud of its own making. If it collapsed violently that would explain the jets.
However, what is the scale? Are we looking at a star or something else?

 

[Fewmet]

Well you have several features apparent. You have two jets, one red-shifted (pointed away from us) and one blue-shifted, where the ejecta is traveling towards us. The red blob at the left bottom has a visible dark break which is normally cooler dust that blocks light. Both of the red blobs could be ionized dust blown off of a star in polar opposite directions by magnetic forces. Large stars sometimes do this when they grow so large that their surface gravity is zero. Their outer layers then “fluff off” gradually and they may lose the mass of the Sun every few million years. The central star becomes obscured in a cloud of its own making. If it collapsed violently that would explain the jets.
However, what is the scale? Are we looking at a star or something else?

Can you say something about how the surface gravity becomes zero?

I am surprised by the idea that the colors of the jets are from Doppler shifts. I don't know the calculation off hand, but can the material plausibly move fast enough to shift from appearing red to appearing blue? Or are you being metaphorical?

Thanks in advance.

 

[ibysaiyan]

Can you say something about how the surface gravity becomes zero?

I am surprised by the idea that the colors of the jets are from Doppler shifts. I don't know the calculation off hand, but can the material plausibly move fast enough to shift from appearing red to appearing blue? Or are you being metaphorical?

Thanks in advance.

I don't think such a feat would be impossible for a pulsar,don't they have very high rotation frequency ?

 

[matt.o]

That is an artifact from the reflection of a bright star within the telescope. See http://cas.sdss.org/dr7/en/tools/places/page6.asp"

 

[russ_watters]

Guys - it's just a plain star that someone drew a pretty picture around. They all look like that on google sky map.

 

[matt.o]

Guys - it's just a plain star that someone drew a pretty picture around. They all look like that on google sky map.

No, someone didn't draw a picture around a star. What is seen is an image artifact -- they are quite common around bright stars in the SDSS and other imaging surveys.

 

[russ_watters]

It's not a photograph, matt!

[edit] Er, well, looking at it again I may be wrong - It's just that in some areas there are a huge number of identical looking ones, like they copied and pasted the same images with the same artifacts. This would have to be two images stitched together where one is fine and the other shows the artifact of the streak.

And the colors are very bad unless they were using just one filter or a bad mixture of filters.

 

[matt.o]

That's right, it is and RGB image from the combination of 3 bands.

 

[Arch2008]

Fewmet a star is a contest between gravity crushing the star together and nuclear energy trying to blow it apart. Huge stars grow so large that at their surface the gravity is essentially canceled out by the outward pressure. So the surface gravity is negligible and the star continually loses mass.
http://isi.ssl.berkeley.edu/aavso_mira_information.htm

Depending on how the jets were formed, the ejecta could be moving at relativistic speeds and if the object is very far away then one jet should appear red shifted and the other blue shifted.

Of course, this depends on whether it is a picture of an actual star or is photo-shopped.

P.S. If the jets are an image artifact, then why is the one at the top right purple-blue and the one at the bottom left red? What are the odds of two image artifacts in one picture?

 

[Fewmet]

Fewmet a star is a contest between gravity crushing the star together and nuclear energy trying to blow it apart. Huge stars grow so large that at their surface the gravity is essentially canceled out by the outward pressure. So the surface gravity is negligible and the star continually loses mass.
http://isi.ssl.berkeley.edu/aavso_mira_information.htm

Thanks for the link. So (putting in terms I find more familiar) is it the case the the star has expanded to the point that it radial velocity of the outer layer exceeds the escape velocity?

Depending on how the jets were formed, the ejecta could be moving at relativistic speeds and if the object is very far away then one jet should appear red shifted and the other blue shifted.

Maybe I've been laboring under a misconception, but I had thought red shifts were from one shade of red to another, not the hundreds of nm between red and blue. Am I mistaken?

 

[Arch2008]

I have read that some of the Myra’s may be shaped like an egg, so I’m not too sure how the radial velocity may work out, but the outer layers do escape.

As I understand it, the ejecta in the jets of a star collapsing into say, a black hole, may travel at close to the speed of light. Then, the light from ejecta moving toward us would be blue shifted and that traveling away from us would be red shifted.

So the image could be a huge star that shed several solar masses of dust before collapsing and emitting the jets. The slower shockwave will eventually affect the clouds.

That or I am just totally freakin’ wrong.

 

[matt.o]

So the image could be a huge star that shed several solar masses of dust before collapsing and emitting the jets. The slower shockwave will eventually affect the clouds.

That or I am just totally freakin’ wrong.

I'll repeat. The features in the image are artifacts caused by reflection within the telescope of the light from a bright star. As another example, here is a bright star in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

http://skyserver.sdss3.org/dr8/en/tools/chart/navi.asp?ra=238.85939652&dec=29.54088124"

You can see the CCD edge where multiple pointings have been mosaiced. If you click on the button labelled "fields" on the left panel in the above link, you can see where the CCD edges lie, and you can check that other bright stars lying close to the CCD edges also have similar artifacts.

 

[DaveC426913]

Yes. For Pete's sake, don't start examining this object based on what you're seeing. Google is not guaranteed to be artifact-free. Just like maps of the ground, portions of images are stitched together, and this is not a perfect process.

Find pics of the real artifact. Dissect that.

Until then, speculation closed - or I'll start bombing the thread with http://www.google.ca/search?rlz=1T4...source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1345&bih=569"!