STARS COLLIDE

Grey River Argus, 29 March 1928, Page 5

STARS COLLIDE

UNIQUE DISCOVERY Made at the Cape WILL NEW SOLAR SYSTEM EVOLVE? (Australian and N.Z. (’able Assn.) CAPETOWN, March 27. The stall of the South African Observatory at Johannesburg record a rcmarkable observation. Last week Air B-rnard Dawson, the astronomer of La Plata Observatory, in Argentina, South America reported that the star Nova Pectoris was looking strange, and that he was unable properly to study it with a small telescope. H therefore asked the Johannesburg Observatory to make an examination of it through its 264 inch instrument. This was done by various - members of the staff, when it was dis- | covered that the star was split in two. Professor Spencer-Jones, the Astrononomer Royal at Capetown Observatory. states: It is wrong to say that the star is split in two. There are two stars now, ami there were two stars before, although we did not know that. The star Nova Pictoris belongs to the (dass of stars which blaze up rapidly in the course of a few days from below naked-eye visibility to a very brilliant state. The state of the two stars now visible seems to show that they arc due to a collision between two stars, or to a grazing impact of two stars.

Professor Spencer-Jones judges the distance between the two stars to be one fifth of a second of an arc. He thinks that it is possible that this is the first direct evidence of a collision or of a grazing impact of stars. He says that the origin of our solar system is the direct result of an identically similar occurrence. In the nebula consequent on the outburst in Nova Pictoris, he says, the constellation may condense into planets, and may form another solar. system, where life may