Astronomers have photographed a distant star in what appears to be its death throes, the first time such a phenomenon has been pictured happening outside the Milky Way galaxy.
The star, Sol, which is 2,000 times the size of our sun and has been dubbed the “behemoth star,” was photographed by the Very Large Telescope Interferometer. The find was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
“For the first time, we have succeeded in taking a zoomed-in image of a dying star in a galaxy outside our own Milky Way,” astrophysicist Keiichi Ohnaka said, according to the European Southern Observatory.
The red supergiant is 160,000 light-years away and is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a “dwarf” galaxy close to our own.
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A large disc-shaped ring can be seen surrounding the star, which astronomers identify as being a mass ejection of matter and energy, a tell-tale sign the star is ready to go supernova.
“We are excited because this may be related to the drastic ejection of material from the dying star before a supernova explosion,” Ohnaka said.