Well, while the facts are interesting that quoted BBC news article is unfortunately the
usual superficial bla bla style that one should better stay away from...
-- lots of phrases without real hard scientific content
-- no serious sources of the information cited
-- no mention that Altair has by far not been the first evidence of a non-spherical star.
-- no specification of the reached angular resolution in the CHARA array such that one may judge oneself the significance of the statements made
So here is some far more serious info.
-----------------------------------
--the original paper in
Science
http://www.astro.lsa.umich.edu/~monnier ... _final.pdf
--links to
press releases from the places that have something to say about the issue
first hand:
1) The CHARA long-baseline optical/near-infrared interferometric array of 4-6 telescopes on Mt Wilson,
http://www.chara.gsu.edu/CHARA/array.html
operated by the team from Georgia State University:
http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwexa/news/archiv ... altair.htm
2) The press release from University of Michigan, where (assistant professor ) John Monnier works. He is a coauthor of the paper.
http://www.astro.lsa.umich.edu/~monnier ... r2007.html
3) Press release of the National Science foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=109612
See also this instructive figure, concerning the resolution which is as small as 1 Milliarcsecond!!
http://www.chara.gsu.edu/CHARA/Slides/Fig3.jpg
Previous arrays of 3 infrared interferometers (IOTA array) already observed asymmetries of Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars with resolutions of 5-10 milliarcseconds.
See e.g.
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0607156
Bye Fridger
