The Hubble telescope captured a spectacular eruption of a "stellar volcano". Photos and video

The Hubble Space Telescope has created a complex portrait of two neighboring stars that have been in close contact for centuries. However, the relationship between the star duo was quite complex and unstable.

According to scientists, one of the stars is a white dwarf, and its companion is an old red giant. The telescope recorded an explosive meeting of these two neighbors, Space.com reports.

The new Hubble Space Telescope image shows an impressive hourglass-shaped nebula that was created as a result of centuries of interaction between two different inhabitants of space: a compact, almost unchanged white dwarf and a giant star that has grown to a scale 400 times the size of our Sun.

According to the researchers, this giant star dims and brightens over the course of 387 Earth days. Hubble detected it in a star system known as R Aquarius, which is located about 710 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius.

Hubble team scientists note that the white dwarf is approaching the red giant during its 44-year orbit, ejecting material onto its surface, occasionally exploding like a "giant hydrogen bomb."

This outburst spews swirling, geyser-like streams of glowing gas into space. The ejected material flies into space at a speed of more than 1.6 million kilometers per hour, which, according to the researchers, is "fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in 15 minutes."

The R Aquarius star system has already been well studied by several space and ground-based telescopes. Hubble began observing it shortly after its launch in 1990.

The latest study by the telescope shows that the ejected material has woven itself into a spiral pattern – the result of twisting under the force of the explosion and then twisting as it is pushed outward by powerful magnetic fields.

The scientists also combined five Hubble images of the R System of Aquarius over the past decade into a video that highlights the star duo's drop in brightness caused by the red giant's strong pulsations, as well as the dramatic evolution of the surrounding nebula.

Using such images, astronomers have tracked the emitted material at least 400 billion kilometers from the star, or 24 times the diameter of our solar system, which is "extraordinary even in astronomical terms," the Hubble team noted.

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