For the first time, astronomers have managed to capture an enlarged image of a dying star in another galaxy.
This was reported by the press service of the European Southern Observatory.
We are talking about the star WOH G64, located at a distance of 160 thousand light years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud – one of the small galaxies orbiting our Milky Way.
Astronomers have known about this star for decades and named it the “giant star.” About 2,000 times the size of our Sun, WOH G64 is classified as a red supergiant.
The image was captured thanks to the amazing sharpness provided by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO’s VLTI). It shows a star expelling gas and dust in its final stages before going supernova.
“We discovered an ovoid cocoon closely surrounding the star,” the scientists note. “We’re excited because this could be due to a sudden ejection of material from a dying star before a nova explodes.”
Scientists have long been interested in this behemoth star. In 2005 and 2007, they used ESO’s VLTI telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert to learn more about the star’s features, and continued to study it over the following years.
But the actual image of the star remained elusive – it had to wait for the development of one of the second-generation VLTI instruments, GRAVITY.
Comparing their new results with other previous observations of WOH G64, scientists were surprised to find that the star had become dimmer over the past decade.
We discovered that the star has undergone significant changes over the past 10 years, giving us a rare opportunity to observe the star’s life in real time, the scientists note.
In the final stages of their lives, red supergiants such as WOH G64 shed their outer layers of gas and dust in a process that can take thousands of years.
The star is one of the most extreme of its kind, and any sudden change could push it closer to an explosive end, the researchers note.
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Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.