A good photographer is someone who can pursue his goal for years until he reaches his goal. perfect shot. For example, we talk about animals, sunrises or the northern lights. If the target is a person, we are talking about a stalker. The fact is that this exhaustive monitoring in order to find the perfect image is also carried out in astronomy. You just have to see how interesting it was to see many years ago first photo of a black hole. Or at least his silhouette. The stars were carefully photographed repeatedly. It’s easier than with a black hole. However, they were all located in our galaxy: Milky Way. But now an international team of astronomers has captured the first close-up photograph of a dying star from another galaxy.
The star in question VON G64A red supergiant located in the Large Magellanic Cloudat a distance of 160,000 light years. Scientists have studied this since the 1990s. Both this and other distant stars were analyzed using methods allowing remote analysis many of its parameters. That is, we knew what it was, but we didn’t see it. However, now, thanks to European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO VLTI)the same scientists who observed it managed to photograph the star.
It’s very exciting because not only have they achieved something that hasn’t been possible before. They also discovered a structure that suggests the process from explosion to supernova is not quite what we thought until now.
The first photo of a fading star
During all this monitoring time and as analysis tools improved, it was noticed that WOH G64 became getting weaker. Especially in the last 10 years.
Red supergiants are the largest stars in the sky. Not the most widespread. They form when a star is larger than 10 solar masses reaches the stage when he’s out of hydrogen that it is used as fuel, so it starts safety helium. Consequently, he approaches the occasion of his existence.
When this sunset occurs, there will be an explosion known as supernova explosion. The observations of these scientists showed that she was very close to reaching this phase. Moreover, this is a large star in a very extreme phase, so any disturbance could literally be a bombshell.
It was interesting take a photo of this star and fortunately, surveillance tools have improved enough to do this. The VLTI interferometer was ready to capture the image in which they saw something special.
Cocoon before explosion
In the photograph of the star, its authors captured something curious. There was some kind of oval cocoon around him. This seemed to correspond material that may be released in an explosion. But it didn’t quite fit.
As one of the study authors explained in a statement, Keiichi Ohnakathat the cocoon “may be associated with a sudden ejection of material from a dying star before a supernova explosion.”
They not only photographed the star beyond the Milky Waybut they went further, capturing the star obviously dying.
But there was something even more curious. And, according to older and less detailed observations combined with computer models, the shape of the cocoon during the death of a star there must be another. This may be because the models were flawed or because there is another factor that has not yet been discovered. For example, a star could have hidden companion this causes discrepancies. We will have to study this star in more detail to get the missing answers. At this point, it cannot be denied that the achievements of these scientists will be passed on history of astronomy.
Source: Hiper Textual
