| Title | Giant Dying Star Explodes as Scientists Watch in Real Time | |
| Date | Friday January 07 2022, @07:43PM | |
| Author | janrinok | |
| Topic | ||
| from the real-fireworks dept. | ||
https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_a6c9307a6c1df0d4cc9e84ee945f232c
The death of a star is one of the most dramatic and violent events in space -- and astronomers had an unprecedented front-row seat to the explosive end of a stellar giant.
Ground-based telescopes provided the first real-time look at the death throes of a red supergiant star. While these aren't the brightest or most massive stars, they are the largest in terms of volume.
One popular red supergiant star is Betelgeuse, which has captured interest due to its irregular dimming. While it was predicted that Betelgeuse may go supernova, it's still around.
However, the star at the heart of this new research, located in the NGC 5731 galaxy about 120 million light-years away from Earth, was 10 times more massive than the sun before it exploded.
Submitted via IRC for boru
For the first time, telescopes imaged the self-destruction and final death throes of a massive star.
A team of researchers used the UH Institute for Astronomy-operated Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) on Maui and W. M. Keck Observatory on Hawaiʻi Island observe the red supergiant during its last 130 days leading up to its deadly detonation. The observations were part of their ongoing Young Supernova Experiment (YSE) transient survey.
"This is a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die," said Wynn Jacobson-Galán, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at University of California, Berkeley and lead author of the study. "Direct detection of pre-supernova activity in a red supergiant star has never been observed before in an ordinary Type II supernova. For the first time, we watched a red supergiant star explode!"
Source: https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2022/01/06/explosion-of-supergiant-star-captured-by-uh-telescope
Exploding Supergiant Star Got Surprisingly Busy During Its Final Days:
Red supergiant stars are quiet and calm before exploding into Type II supernova — but not this one. The observation is important because it suggests some supergiant stars experience significant internal changes before going supernova
The Type II supernova was detected on Sept. 16, 2020, but astronomers had already been tracking significant pre-explosion activity during the previous 130 days. In a W. M. Keck Observatory press release, Raffaella Margutti, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, said it was "like watching a ticking time bomb."
Type II supernovae result from the sudden collapse and violent explosion of massive stars. Only stars between eight and around 40 stellar masses undergo this form of death. "We've never confirmed such violent activity in a dying red supergiant star where we see it produce such a luminous emission, then collapse and combust, until now," said Margutti, the senior author of the new study, published in the Astronomical Journal.
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2
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printed from SoylentNews, Giant Dying Star Explodes as Scientists Watch in Real Time on 2024-04-24 22:59:37