The astronomers observed the star for more than 100 days. Thus, they discovered the activity it had before its explosion. Before this finding, the stars were believed to be quiet before their death.
A group of scientists had the opportunity to see in real time how a star came to a dramatic end for the first time in history.
It all happened when a team of researchers from the University of Hawaii Pan-STARRS Astronomy Institute and the WM Keck Observatory conducted A study called the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE), where they used two telescopes in Hawaii and observed a red supergiant star during its last 130 days before its explosion.
The main star of the study is in the galaxy NGC 5731 at regarding 120 million light years distant from Earth. Scientists first detected it in 2020, when they noticed that it was in its final stage due to its large amounts of light. Thus, the team continued to observe it day by day until its final explosion.
An unprecedented find
Until this event, the scientific community I thought the stars were relatively quiet before its explosion to a supernova, but instead, the researchers witnessed a series of eruptions that marked the self-destruction of the astro to end up transforming into a type II supernova.
“This is a major advance in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die,” said lead study author Wynn Jacobson-Galán, a graduate researcher at the National Science Foundation at the University of California, Berkeley, in a statement collected by CNN.
“It’s like seeing a time bomb”said Raffaella Margutti, associate associate professor at CIERA and lead author of the paper. “We have never confirmed such violent activity on a star dying red supergiant where it has been seen how it produces such a luminous emission, and then collapses and burns, until now ”, he explained.
Following this study, the astronomers they hope to use the information collected to continue looking for stars with this level of radiation and confirm if that luminosity indicates his imminent death.
“I am very excited by all the new ‘unknowns’ that this discovery brought,” said Jacobson-Galán, who also assured that the finding will encourage more scientists to solve the mystery of how massive stars spend the last moments of their lives.
According to the observations made by the researchers, the eruption of the star was carried out in this way:
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