Zooming into the red giant star R Sculptoris

10 October, 2012 / Read time: 1 minute

This video sequence starts with a view of the rather faint constellations of Sculptor (The Sculptor) and Cetus (The Sea Monster). As we zoom in we see a few faint galaxies but close in on a star that looks very red. This is the old red giant variable star R Sculptoris. Observations using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have revealed an unexpected spiral structure in the material around this star.

Credit: ESO/A. Fujii/Digitized Sky Survey 2