New Delhi: NASA's Hubble Telescope spotted a massive fireballs, twice the size of Mars, being ejected near a dying star.
The plasma balls are zooming so fast through space it would take only 30 minutes for them to travel from Earth to the moon. This stellar "cannon fire" has continued once every 8.5 years for at least the past 400 years, astronomers estimate, according to NASA.
Scientists estimated that the temperature of these gaseous blob is around 17,000 degree Fahrenheit, which is twice as hot as the surface of the sun.
"We knew this object had a high-speed outflow from previous data, but this is the first time we are seeing this process in action," said Raghvendra Sahai of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, lead author of the study.
"We suggest that these gaseous blobs produced during this late phase of a star's life help make the structures seen in planetary nebulae." However, NASA scientist are still unsure about the origination of these fireballs, but their best explanation is that they came from an unseen companion star.
The companion star is in elliptical orbit and as it enters into the outer atmosphere of the host star V Hyrdrea, it starts eating up material, which is then turned into a disk around the companion star. The disk becomes a sort of launching pad for the plasma balls.
