Scientists have successfully captured the first detailed image of a dying star wrapped in a strange, egg-shaped cocoon outside our galaxy. The star, identified as WOH G64, is located 160,000 light-years away from us in the Large Magellanic Cloud and is surrounded by plumes of gas and dust – indicating it was in the final stages of its life. During a star’s final stages, it turns into a red supergiant before dying in a massive cosmic explosion, known as a supernova.
“For the first time, we have succeeded in taking a zoomed-in image of a dying star in a galaxy outside our own,” said Keiichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist at Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile and lead author of the study.
WOH G64 was captured using the gravity instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). With a size approximately 2000 times larger than our Sun, WOH G64 provides insight into the lifecycle of a star and how it goes out with a spectacular bang.
Mr. Ohnaka said, “We discovered an egg-shaped cocoon close to the star. We are excited because it may be related to the massive ejection of material from the dying star before the supernova explosion.”
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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 characteristics of the star and have continued to study it for years since then. However, the actual image 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.
“Giant stars explode with energy equivalent to that of the Sun that shines throughout its entire 10 billion-year lifespan. People have seen these supernova explosions, and astronomers have found some stars that did explode in old images. But We have never seen a star change in a way that signals its imminent death.”
Researchers believe that gas and dust around the star, also known as shed material, may be responsible for the dimming and unpredictable shape of the cocoon around the star. The new image shows that the cocoon has expanded, which surprised scientists, who were expecting a different shape based on previous observations and computer models.
The team believes that the cocoon’s egg-like shape can be explained by either the loss of the star or the impact of an as-yet-undiscovered companion star.
