Editor-DN
Scientists have successfully captured the first detailed image of a dying star outside our Milky Way galaxy, wrapped in a strange, egg-shaped cocoon. The star, identified as WOH G64, is located 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud and is surrounded by clumps of gas and dust — suggesting it has its own star. It is in the last stage of life. During the star’s final phase, it turns into a red supergiant before dying in a massive cosmic explosion, known as a supernova.
“For the first time, we have been able to take a zoom-in image of a dying star in a galaxy outside our own Milky Way,” said Keichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist from Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile and lead author. study.
WOH G64 was captured using the GRAVITY instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). At about 2,000 times the size of our Sun, WOH G64 provides insight into the life cycle of a star and how it erupts in a spectacular explosion.
“We discovered an egg-shaped cocoon very close to the star. We are excited because it could be related to the massive ejection of material from a dying star before a supernova explosion,” added Mr Ohnaka.
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Years of research
Scientists have been interested in the red supergiant for nearly two decades. In 2005 and 2007, Mr Ohnaka and his team used ESO’s VLTI in Chile’s Atacama Desert to learn more about the star’s properties and continued to study it in the years since. However, an actual photo of the star remained elusive. To click the first, detailed image, the team had to wait for the development of one of the VLTI’s second-generation instruments.
“Massive stars explode with the same amount of energy as the Sun has shone in its entire 10 billion-year lifetime. People have seen these supernova explosions, and astronomers have found some stars that explode in old photographs. . But we have never seen a star change in such a way as to indicate its imminent death.”
The researchers believe that gas and dust around the star, also known as shadow material, may be responsible for the dimming and unpredictable appearance of the cocoon around the star. The new image shows that the cocoon is stretched, which surprised scientists, who expected a different shape based on previous observations and computer models.
The team believes that the egg-like shape of the cocoon could be explained either by the collapse of the star or by the impact of an as-yet-undiscovered companion star.
