Blue Companion

Astronomers get most of their information by studying and analyzing the light of the bright stars. They know almost nothing about the smaller bodies in distant space which are not self-luminous, i.e., planets, meteors, comets. But they suspect a great deal and are forever looking for proof. Last week, in Science magazine, Russian-born Astronomer Otto Struve, head of the observatories of Chicago and Texas Universities, described some delicate observations that allowed him to spot tiny meteors 250 light years (about 1,500,000,000,000,000 miles) away.

The brilliant red star Antares (450 times the diameter of the sun) in the constellation of Scorpio is a "double" star. Antares has a comparatively faint blue "companion" which is so close that it is almost impossible to photograph by itself. Irregularities in the earth's atmosphere make the images of the two stars dance around, forming "tremor discs" of light which overlap on the photographic plate during a long exposure.

On certain nights when the atmosphere is not shimmering at its usual rate, the "tremor discs" become smaller and can be separated. Astronomer Struve watched his chances, and waited for seven years. Last month, McDonald Observatory at Fort Davis, Tex., had a wonderfully "steady" night. Struve trained the 82-inch reflecting telescope on the Companion of Antares. The image of the Companion trembled hardly at all. In a few rare minutes, he was able to coax it separately into a spectrograph and photograph its spectrum under almost ideal conditions without interference from the brilliant red light of nearby Antares.

A study of the spectro-photographs showed Struve several faint lines - which did not come from the Companion itself, but from space around it. Using the exact technique of spectroscopy, he proved that the lines were made by light waves characteristic of iron.

What was iron doing in cold space many million miles away from the nearest star? Struve concluded that both stars, Antares and Companion, must be surrounded by a vast swarm, of meteors, like the iron-nickel meteors which bombard the earth. Apparently they shoot through an enormous region 50,000 times as wide as the diameter of the sun (865,000 miles). They may be attracted mainly by the powerful gravitation of massive Antares. But they show up on Astronomer Struve's spectroscope because intense ultraviolet rays from the hot, blue Companion make them glow with telltale light.

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