NASA's TESS telescope helps astronomers detect regular pulses from young stars

New Delhi : With the help of NASA's TESS space telescope, the scientists have been able to untangle the mystery behind discordant frequencies of stars across the galaxy, managing to find a regular pulse.

They're called delta Scuti variable stars, and they rotate so rapidly that the stars flatten slightly, scrambling their pulsation patterns and producing what seems to be chaos.

The scientists have now categorized their pulsation to regular, high-frequency modes identified in 60 delta Scuti stars of intermediate-mass, ranging between 1.5 and 2.5 times the mass of the Sun.

"Delta Scuti stars clearly pulsate in interesting ways, but the patterns of those pulsations have so far defied understanding," said astronomer Tim Bedding of the University of Sydney in Australia.

"To use a musical analogy, many stars pulsate along with simple chords, but delta Scuti stars are complex, with notes that seem to be jumbled. TESS has shown us that's not true for all of them."

They say stellar propulsion is not an unusual phenomenon. Almost all of the stars end up oscillating in a rhythmic manner due to acoustic waves traveling inside them. These waves are thought to be created by convection and the star's magnetic field, and they cause the star to expand and contract slightly, like a heartbeat.