The first photo of a supergiant star outside the Milky Way has been published; To look

For the first time in history, astronomers have managed to get close to a star outside the Milky Way. The star, known as WOH G64, is located 160,000 light-years away in the Magellanic Cloud galaxy.

From the image, Researchers recorded that the star lived its last moments. This is because the star is releasing gas and dust, indicating that it is preparing to explode in a supernova, a process that can take thousands of years.

Check out the video released by the European Southern Observatory:

The photo was published along with an article on the study conducted by Keiichi Ohnaka of Andrés Bello University in Chile. “We found an egg-shaped cocoon closely surrounding the star. We are excited because this may be related to the violent ejection of material from the dying star before a supernova explosion,” the author said.

Co-author Gerd Weigelt, professor of astronomy at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, highlighted the rare opportunity to observe the star.

“We discovered He said that the star has experienced a significant change in the last 10 years.“This gives us a rare opportunity to witness the life of a star in real time.”

Despite The red supergiant star is two thousand times more massive than the Sun, and observing it has always been a difficult task.thanks to the great distance between it and planet Earth. Therefore, it was necessary to wait for GRAVITY, the second generation instrument of the powerful VLTI telescope, to be completed in Chile to take the photo.

The star is expected to become increasingly dimmer as the years pass, making the task of photographing the star increasingly difficult. Researchers now hope that a new update to GRAVITY will provide greater observation clarity even as the star weakens.

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