By Ron Cowen
New images from an array of radio telescopes are providing the first detailed view of activity near a star other than our sun.
Although the elderly star, TX Camelopardalis, lies 1,000 light-years away, researchers were able to examine radio-emitting gas flung just a few hundred million kilometers—equivalent to about twice Earth’s distance from the sun. Astronomers obtained the images by using the Very Large Baseline Array, a network of 10 radio telescopes stretching from the U.S. Virgin Islands to Hawaii.