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P Cygni Unmasked
At first glance, P Cygni in the heart of the Northern Cross might look like a run-of-the-mill variable
star. But in reality its not. P Cygni is one of the most
luminous stars known, putting out energy an estimated
700,000 times faster than the Sun. Although currently
shining at 5th magnitude, it brightened to 3rd magnitude around A.D. 1600. A second brightening occurred
in the mid-17th century, after which the star settled
down to its present state, which includes irregular brightness fluctuations of about 0.2 magnitude (20 percent).
Astronomers suspect that P Cygni ejected gaseous
shells during its recent eruptions. A team of researchers
10 arcseconds
4 arcminutes
1 arcminute
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from England now has a new instrument that has enabled its members to peer deep into the close environs
of P Cygni and image its ejecta with unprecedented
clarity and resolution.
John A. OConnor, John Meaburn, and Myfanwy
Bryce (University of Manchester) tested the newly designed Manchester Occulting Mask Imager (MOMI) on
the star with the 2.6-meter Nordic Optical Telescope at
La Palma in the Canary Islands in November 1997. The
instrument works like a coronagraph, but instead of
using an entirely opaque disk to produce artificial
eclipses, MOMI has a tiny, 4-arcsecond-wide occulting