back to article Exotic star's 'violent ejections' during companion's visits

Astronomers have released imagery of an "exotic" star which spurts out "regular ejections of matter" every few decades. The scientists theorise that this is caused by occasional interactions between the star and a longtime companion. The star HD87643, imaged by the ESO's 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla A cloudless sky lets …

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  1. Chris Bradshaw
    Paris Hilton

    Sounds like an interesting relationship..

    But doesn't the phrase "regular ejections of matter every few decades ... caused by occasional interactions between the star and a longtime companion." just cry out for substitution of the word 'ejaculations' instead of 'ejections', and similar throughout? It IS friday, you know, and there are rules about this sort of thing....

    Paris because the beer icon is for later...

  2. MnM
    Dead Vulture

    Confused

    I was truly expecting a smut story about Duncan James.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    What?!

    And there was me thinking I was going to see something of the naked variety

    Paris.......because we need some filth on a Friday.

  4. Matt Davey
    Coat

    @Chris

    Wasn't the subtitle to the article good enough for you? Perfect pitch, Lewis.

    Mine's the one with the interstellar dust stain on the front.

  5. H3N0451

    Best headline ever

    seriously

  6. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Paris angle

    Bah! From the title I thought this was going to be a PH story.

  7. Simon Riley

    Henri Boffin

    I can't tell you how happy reading that there's a boffin called Boffin has made me.

  8. Colin 4
    Thumb Up

    Restrained Innuendo

    Not like you Lewis, to be so timid ! The innuendo in this article could have been much more explicit methinks ... still, very interesting.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Sadly 'regular'

    Unfortunately 15 years between a good matter-ejecting seeing-to is all that I seem to get these days as well.

  10. Jay Castle
    Thumb Up

    2 in 1!!

    Not only do we have the brilliantly named 'Multinational Science Alliance', there's a Dr. Boffin involved.

    Fantastic!

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sounds like a normal relationship

    "regular ejections of matter every few decades [...] caused by occasional interactions between the [object in question] and a longtime companion."

    Sounds rather like my marriage.

  12. OmniCitadel
    WTF?

    grumble grumble

    I for one am let down by the head line

  13. Allan George Dyer
    Paris Hilton

    @Chris Bradshaw

    Yes, I thought this was a "Bootnotes" story...

  14. steogede

    Re: Sounds like an interesting relationship

    >> But doesn't the phrase "regular ejections of matter every few decades ... caused by occasional interactions between the star and a longtime companion." just cry out for substitution of the word 'ejaculations' instead of 'ejections', and similar throughout?

    I think they were left unchanged on purpose, as an 'exercise for the reader'. Heck most of us probably made the substitution without even thinking about it.

  15. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    Blue looks white for a reason

    Install python and the python imaging library (PIL), and run the program at the end of this comment on the big tiff image. It turns every over exposed pixel black. Some of the stars might emit more blue light than red and green, but all three components are maxed out in the bright stars so you cannot tell. You cannot even be sure of the colours of the stars that are not over exposed. You would have to find out if the picture is really made of red/green/blue components - it could easily be infra-red, ruby-red, red.

    #! /usr/bin/env python

    from PIL import Image

    i = Image.open('ejecty_star_big.tiff')

    Image.eval(i, lambda x: (x, 0)[x==255]).save('overexposed.tiff')

  16. Graham Marsden
    Paris Hilton

    What a disappointment...

    ... I was expecting a Naomi Campbell story :-(

    Paris because...

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    honestly

    who the fuck pays for these boffins to do research into observing useless phenomena hundreds of light years away. How about doing something useful on this planet maybe. And don't give me the any 'enhance our understanding' / 'our place in the universe' bullshit. I don't care, neither should you.

  18. Sceptical Bastard

    grumble grumble 2

    A Friday headline like that usually means smut.

    Quote: "exotic" star which spurts out "regular ejections of matter"

    That HAS to be Paris surely?

  19. D@v3
    Paris Hilton

    am i the only one...

    who read that as Erotic star's 'violent ejections'......

  20. Lord Raa
    Boffin

    Re: Honestly

    Because it's cool.

    Besides, when you've got a scientist called "Dr. Boffin", it's better to let him research cosmic phenomena lest he decide to become a supervillain and hold us all to ransom with his death ray wielding sharks.

  21. markfiend
    Thumb Down

    at "honestly"

    Translation of your comment: "I'm a moron with no interest in the world around me, and think everyone else should be too."

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    As Finbar Sunders would say....

    FNAR FNAR!

    (Paris because she's also a star that causes recular ejections)

  23. c3
    Coat

    Me thinks we got a squirter

    I'll take "Exotic stars" for 800.

    Exotic star known for ejecting juices.

    Who is Cytherea* ? Ummm .... I mean ... who is HD87643 ?

    *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytherea_%28porn_star%29

  24. AlistairJ
    Coffee/keyboard

    Old grey whistle test

    Yes it ejects some cosmic star juice each time it is kicked by that damned star man at the beginning of said muso programmes title sequence.

    Dr Henri Boffin indeed. Almost as plausible as a journo called Lewis Page.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Possibly...

    ....the best headline, subhead, and opening para of the year.

    Paris, because sometimes the blue star just needs to get binged.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Am I living in an alternate universe?

    These types of stars were being discussed in 1983 when I was doing a physics degree. My mate was doing astrophysics at the same time and we both knew about this class of stellar object -- unsurprising, since they were first described in the mid-nineteenth century (1860's I think).

    Its almost certainly just a type C-J or C-H class carbon (or "sooty") star.

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