Comment on stars & sharks
davidgro@lemmy.world 2 months agoIn my opinion Polaris B and Polaris Ab (it’s actually a three star system!) don’t count as ‘The North Star’ because they contribute almost nothing to the visible light seen without a telescope. Without Aa there’s just no north pole star at the moment.
But that’s interesting about the age being uncertain. I’d use the age of the merger as the age of the star anyway unless it didn’t add much mass (but in that case it would have been a short lived giant anyway…) which would still likely put it under the 420 million years mark.
neatchee@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Fair enough on the first point!
The interesting scenario re: Polaris A’s age would be if a larger, younger original star merged with a smaller, much older star. You’d have a small amount of late-stage byproducts in an otherwise early-stage star. That would definitely make any age models ‘confused’ heh