Red Supergiant Star Exploding in Massive Supernova- First in Mankind’s history.
Researchers say they’ve observed a red supergiant star exploding into a supernova for the primary time. They assert it had been a ‘calm before the storm’ in terms of supernova blasts.
Supernovas happen when massive stars die, or run out of fuel and collapse in on themselves, not to stay forces of gravity and nuclear reactions in balance.
Two telescopes were involved in making the observations, both on Hawaii: the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy Pan-STARRS on Haleakalā, Maui, and therefore the WM Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, respectively. The collected data is already providing new insights. There was evidence of dense
Astronomers capture Red Supergiant’s Death Throes before collapsing into a kind II supernova. Discovery defies previous ideas of how red supergiant stars evolve right before exploding.
The discovery was published today on Epiphany, 2022, within the Astrophysical Journal.
“This could also be a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die,” said Wynn Jacobson-Galan, the study’s lead author.
‘We’ve never confirmed such violent activity’ said Jacobson Galan, who was a graduate research fellow at North-western University and UC Berkeley. Data showed evidence of dense circumstellar material surrounding the star at the time of explosion.
SN 2020tlf’s progenitor red supergiant star — located within the NGC 5731 galaxy about 120 million light-years away from Earth — was 10 times more massive than the sun.
The study was conducted by Raffaella Margutti and W. V. Jacobson-Galán at Northwestern University’s CIERA and therefore the Keck Observatory’s Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer on Mauna Kea, Hawaii
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