The star Eta Carinae is a dying, unstable supergiant. It has sporadic episodes where its own light output rips its outer layers off and throws them off into space, revealing deeper, hotter parts of the stars innards in events known as eruptions. This causes the star's color appearance to bounce between orange (before the eruption) to bluish-white (after eruption). What pair of temperatures (in Kelvin) might account for Eta Carinae's color appearance change?

a. 4100 K before the eruption and 9000 K after the eruption

b. 10,000 K before the eruption and 4200 K after the eruption

c. 4700 K before the eruption and 36,000 K after the eruption

d. 3800 K before the eruption and 37,000 K after the eruption

e. 9900 K before the eruption and 6200 K after the eruption

Question

Physics

Princess Baird

26 August, 12:01

The star Eta Carinae is a dying, unstable supergiant. It has sporadic episodes where its own light output rips its outer layers off and throws them off into space, revealing deeper, hotter parts of the stars innards in events known as eruptions. This causes the star's color appearance to bounce between orange (before the eruption) to bluish-white (after eruption). What pair of temperatures (in Kelvin) might account for Eta Carinae's color appearance change?

a. 4100 K before the eruption and 9000 K after the eruption

b. 10,000 K before the eruption and 4200 K after the eruption

c. 4700 K before the eruption and 36,000 K after the eruption

d. 3800 K before the eruption and 37,000 K after the eruption

e. 9900 K before the eruption and 6200 K after the eruption

+2

Answers (1)

Know the Answer?

Valeria Moyer · Answer 1

a. 4100 K before the eruption and 9000 K after the eruption

Explanation:

As color changes from red or orange to blue in seven color of rainbow, temperature increases. Since before eruption, color was orange which turns to bluish so temperature will be increased after eruption.

At 10000 K a hot object starts emanating blue color, which becomes invisible ultraviolet at temperature beyond 10000. Hence temperature of 36000 K or 37000 K is ruled out. The correct option is, therefore a).