A Chance Encounter of Two Stars ✛
In a dark cloud where new stars are born, two of them recently flew very close to each other. They resemble two strangers who accidentally bumped into each other on the street and are now going their separate ways. Astronomers tracked them for eight years and were able to measure their motion.
It turned out that the path of these stars is almost like that of a thrown stone: they approached each other and are now moving apart, but they are still held together by gravity. Around each star there is a flat disk of gas and dust, like the rings of Saturn. These disks are tilted in different directions, and one of them rotates in the opposite direction. This happens when stars are born separately and only later meet.
Now astronomers will continue observations to understand whether these stars will remain a pair or fly apart forever. This will help us learn how often massive stars form pairs not from birth, but after a chance encounter.
Periastron was passed only about 60 years ago, meaning that at the time of observation the stars were still moving apart after their closest approach. Had astronomers looked at the system a century ago, they would have seen it in a completely different configuration.