When a star is nearing the end of its life, it turns red and is surrounded by a dense shell.
A group of astronomers has found a way to tell when a star is about to die in a catastrophic supernova explosion. Space reported it.
When a massive star is nearing the end of its life, it goes through several stages of rapid development. Deep in the star’s core, there is a transition from hydrogen fusion to a fusion of heavier elements, from helium to carbon, oxygen, magnesium and silicon. At the end of the chain, the star eventually forms iron in its core.
Because iron absorbs energy instead of releasing it, it spells the end for the star, and in less than a dozen minutes, it actually turns inward in a spectacular explosion called a supernova.
But from the outside it is difficult to understand what exactly happens in the hearts of stars. Of course, at the end of their lives, these giant stars swell to massive proportions. They also become very bright – tens of thousands of times brighter than the Sun. But because the surface of the stars is stretched so much, their outer temperature drops, turning them into red giants.
For example, a giant star that is about to explode is Betelgeuse. If it were within our solar system, this star, which is only 11 times more massive than the Sun, would reach the orbit of Jupiter.
So, experts have developed a way to detect supernovae, which are likely to explode within the next few years. Astronomers have studied dozens of Type II-Ps. Unlike other supernovae, these explosions remain bright after the initial explosion.
Scientists have found images of stars before they exploded, and they all became red supergiants like Betelgeuse. This is a clear sign that such stars are supernova candidates ready to explode at a moment’s notice.
Stars that produce such supernovae are thought to have a dense shell of material surrounding them before they explode. It is the heating of this material from the initial shock wave that leads to the fact that the brightness is preserved.
Earlier it was reported that Hubble took the image of the stars in the Terzan 4 globular cluster.
Astronomers take detailed pictures of the Sun
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Source: korrespondent
