STARS COLLIDE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 48, Issue 144, 29 March 1928, Page 5

STARS COLLIDE.

CHANGE IN NOVA PICTORIS. REMARKABLE OBSERVATION. (Press Association—Copyright.) CAPE TOWN, March 27. The staff of the Union Observatory at Johannesburg recorded a remarkable observation last week. Mr Bernard Dawson (of the La Plata Observatory, Argentina) reported that the star Nova Pictori9 was looking strange and he was unable to study it properly with a small telescope. He therefore asked the Johannesburg Observatory to make an examination of it through its 26J-inch instrument. This was done by various members of the staff, when it was discovered that the star was split in two. Mr Spencer Jones (Astronomer Royal at the Cape Town Observatory) states: "It is wrong to say that the star is split in two. There are two stars now, and there were two stars before, although we did' not know that. Nova Pictoris belongs to the class of star which blazes up rapidly in the course of a few days from below naked eye visibility to a very brilliant state. The two stars now visible seem to show that they are due to a collision between two stars, or a grazing impact of two stars." Mr Jones judges the distance between the two stars to be one-fifth of a second of arc. He thinks it possible that this is the first direct evidence of collision, or the grazing impact of stars. The origin of our solar system is the direct result of an identically similar occurrence in the nebula. Consequent on the outburst, the Pictoris constellation may condense into planets, and form another solar system where life may evolve.