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The motion of bubbling gas on the surface of the star R Doradus<\/p>\n
ALMA (ESO\/NAOJ\/NRAO)\/W. Vlemming<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
Giant bubbles of hot gas more than 75 times the size of our sun have been observed on the surface of a nearby star, which researchers say may lead to better solar computer simulations.<\/p>\n
Wouter Vlemmings and his colleagues at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, hoped to observe R Doradus, which is 178 light years from Earth and 350 times larger than the sun, to better understand how matter is ejected from ageing stars.<\/p>\n
Vlemmings says they booked time with the Atacama Large Millimeter\/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observatory in Chile, where only one in seven applications make it, to collect a single snapshot observation.<\/p>\n
The first two attempts were hindered by Earth weather conditions, so only the third met the strict quality criteria set out in the researchers\u2019 application for observatory time. But this meant they accumulated multiple images, which Vlemmings says were actually all usable, allowing the team to plot movement over time.<\/p>\n
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