Question: What stars have you discovered?

Heidi answered on 19 Nov 2019:

Thanks for asking! At the moment, I’m studying binary stars, which are two stars orbiting each other. So imagine instead of the Earth orbiting the Sun, another star is orbiting the Sun. 🙂 We know a lot about binary stars already, but what I’m working on is a very specific type, and possibly new type of binary star – two red giant stars orbiting each other so close they’re almost touching. This is unusual and new, both because of the size of each star, and also the fact they’re so close together.
At the moment, I’m still working on confirming if our theory is correct, using telescopes to take measurements of the motion of the stars (we call this their “radial velocity”) and the change in brightness over time. I use both datasets to model the stars using astronomical software, and hopefully confirm the discovery.