Astronomers have managed to capture the first close-up image of a star from outside our galaxy, recording the process of its slow death.
Located an impressive 160,000 light-years from us, the star WOH G64 is spewing gas and dust in its final moments – which could last thousands of years – before exploding in a supernova.
“We discovered an egg-shaped cocoon closely surrounding the star. We are excited because this could be related to the drastic ejection of material from the dying star before a supernova explosion,” says Keiichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist at Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile and lead author of the study reporting the observations published this Thursday. (21) in Astronomy & Astrophysics magazine.
While astronomers are already accustomed to photographing the stars of the Milky Way in detail, countless other stars inhabit other galaxies, but their distance makes the task of recording them in detail very challenging. The photograph of WOH G64 was only possible thanks to the sharpness of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO’s VLTI).
The star, nicknamed “giant star”, is approximately 2,000 times larger than our Sun, being classified as a red supergiant.
“We discovered that the star has been undergoing a significant change over the last 10 years, giving us a rare opportunity to witness the life of a star in real time,” said Gerd Weigelt, professor of astronomy at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. , and co-author of the study.
This content was originally published in First photo of a star outside our galaxy reveals the star’s slow death on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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