New Delhi:
Astronomers have discovered the roundest known star in the Universe.
The star, some 5,000 light-years from Earth, is the closest thing to a perfect sphere that has ever been observed in nature, a new study has reported.
According to a study published in Science Advances journal, the distant star, known as Kepler 11145123, has Earth, the sun and every other object that's ever been measured beat in terms of roundness.
The researchers studied Kepler 11145123's natural oscillations over a period of 51 months, from 2009 through 2013.
The team, led by Laurent Gizon from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and the University of Göttingen in Germany, then used this information to determine the star's size.
This technique is known as asteroseismology, because it allows astronomers to probe stellar interiors in much the same way that geologists use earthquakes to study our planet's insides.
The researchers found that Kepler 11145123's equatorial and polar diameters differ by a mere 3.7 miles, even though the star is 1.86 million miles in diameter — about twice as wide as the sun.
The secret behind its near-perfect round shape is that It rotates about three times more slowly than the sun. Magnetic fields can also help flatten stars, so part of the answer may lie in Kepler 11145123's magnetic environment, the study said.
