Star weighed using Einstein's Theory of Relativity

Washington: An international team of astronomers has used the Hubble space telescope to measure the mass of a star by employing Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity.Researchers with NASA'a Space Telescope Science Institute (STSCI) in Baltimore, Maryland, measured the mass of a white dwarf star by analysing how much it bent the light of a more distant star, just as Einstein asserted could be done more than a century ago, Efe news reported.

The study was presented on Wednesday in Austin, Texas, at the 230th American Astronomical Society conference, where scientists from research centres and universities are discussing their latest discoveries.Specifically, the team observed a white dwart star known as Stein 2051B located about 17 light years from the Earth just as it passed in front of a more distant star.

During the alignment, the gravity of the white dwarf bent the light from the farther star, thus making the latter appear to shift approximately two thousandths of an arc-second from its original position, a movement so small that it's equivalent to the size of an ant spotted from more than 2,400 km away.

By measuring the deflection of the more distant star's light, the astronomers calculated that the white dwarf star has about 68 percent of the Sun's mass, a result that coincides with theoretical predictions.