Scientists have successbrimmingy seized 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 discoverd 160,000 weightless-years from us in the Large Magellanic Cdeafening and is surrounded by a plume of gas and dust — presenting it was in the final stage of its life. During a star’s last phase, it alters into a red superhuge before dying in a huge cosmic explosion, understandn as a supernova.
“For the first time, we have flourished in taking a zoomed-in image of a dying star in a galaxy outside our own Milky Way,” shelp Keiichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist from Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile and the direct author of the study.
WOH G64 was seized using the GRAVITY instrument at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). With a size rawly 2000 times that of our Sun, WOH G64 provides insights into the lifecycle of a star and how it goes out with a fascinating prohibitg.
“We discovered an egg-shaped cocoon seally surrounding the star. We are excited becaengage this may be rcontent to the drastic ejection of material from the dying star before a supernova explosion,” Mr Ohnaka inserted.
Also Read | Milky Way Blasts Neighbouring Galaxy’s Mass Like A ‘Giant Hairparcheder’, Hubble Finds
Years of research
Scientists have been interested in the red superhuge for cforfeitly two decades. In 2005 and 2007, Mr Ohnaka and his team engaged ESO’s VLTI in Chile’s Atacama Desert to lacquire more about the star’s features and carried on studying it in the years since. However, an actual image of the star remained elusive. To click the first, detailed image, the team had to defer for the increasement of one of the VLTI’s second-generation instruments.
“Massive stars explode with an energy equivalent to the Sun shining for all of its 10 billion years of life. People have seen these supernova explosions, and astronomers have set up some of the stars that exploded in agederer images. But we have never seen a star alter in a way that signals its imminent death.”
The researchers apverify that the gas and dust around the star, also understandn as shed material, might be reliable for the unwiseming and for the unanticipateed shape of the cocoon around the star. The recent image shows that the cocoon is stretched out, which surpascfinishd scientists, who anticipateed a separateent shape based on previous observations and computer models.
The team apverifys that the cocoon’s egg-appreciate shape could be elucidateed by either the star’s shedding or by the shape of a yet-undiscovered companion star.
