Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Submission Preview

No link to story available

Giant dying star explodes as scientists watch in real time — a first for astronomy

Accepted submission by owl at 2022-01-07 04:29:22
Science

owl [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_a6c9307a6c1df0d4cc9e84ee945f232c [cnn.com]

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.

Original Submission