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    Astronomers capture first close-up image of star in another galaxy

    Pabio Posted on

    Astronomers have achieved a revolutionary milestone by capturing the first close-up image of the dying star WOH G64, located about 160,000 light years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. Using the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile, the research team, led by astrophysicist Keiichi Ohnaka of Andrés Bello University in Chile, provided information unprecedented on the final stages of the life of a massive star.

    “For the first time, we managed to take a magnified image of a dying star in a galaxy outside our Milky Way,” Ohnaka said, according to ABC News. This achievement marks a significant advance in astronomical observation, allowing scientists to study the behavior of stars during the final stages of their life cycles.

    WOH G64 is classified as a red supergiant star and is approximately 2,000 times larger than the Sun, making it one of the largest known stars. The star sheds its outer layers and is surrounded by an unexpected egg-shaped envelope of gas and dust as it nears its end. This material is likely ejected as the star nears the end of its life cycle, providing valuable insight into the processes that occur before a massive star explodes as a supernova.

    The close-up image was captured using the GRAVITY instrument installed on the VLTI, which combines light from four telescopes to create highly detailed cosmic images. “With this image, we can create a better computer model of the star and study how it ejects material before it disappears,” Ohnaka explained.

    Observations made in December 2020 allowed researchers to reconstruct a high-resolution image of WOH G64 in the near-infrared spectrum, showing the star surrounded by a luminous egg-shaped cocoon of gas and dust. This indicates material being ejected from the star, which may be linked to violent mass ejections before a supernova explosion. The elongated emission may be due to bipolar flow along the axis of the dust torus, or it could be caused by an interaction with an unseen companion star.

    The findings regarding WOH G64 were published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, detailing the star’s characteristics and significant mass loss during its red supergiant phase.

    “We detected that the star has undergone significant changes over the past 10 years, giving us a rare opportunity to observe the life of a star in real time,” said Professor Gerd Weigelt of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany.

    “WOH G64 may never return to its original brightness and may continue to slowly fade,” Ohnaka commented. This behavior could confirm WOH G64’s transition to a terminal state, providing a unique chance to study the final stages of a massive star’s life.

    The immense size and extreme characteristics of the WOH G64 make it a particularly interesting subject for study. If WOH G64 were placed at the center of our solar system, it would extend into the orbit of Saturn, the sixth planet from the Sun. Despite its immense size, observing WOH G64 accurately was challenging due to its distance and the complexity of studying stars in other galaxies.

    The use of VLTI and the GRAVITY instrument has overcome previous limitations in observing distant stars. The GRAVITY instrument offers unique resolution by combining light from four telescopes, allowing the team to detect the smallest details of distant objects.

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    As WOH G64 gets weaker, it becomes more and more difficult to take close-up images of it. However, planned updates to VLTI instrumentation, such as the upcoming GRAVITY+, promise to improve the ability to capture even more detailed images of distant and faint stars.

    Astronomers expect WOH G64 to explode in a few thousand years – astronomically speaking, just a moment.

    Understanding the ancestors of supernovae is important because of the role they play in the universe. Supernova explosions are essential for creating elements like carbon and oxygen, which are essential for life. Such explosions forge heavy elements through nucleosynthesis and disperse them in space.

    As more data is collected, WOH G64 could transform our understanding of supernovae and the fate of massive stars in nearby galaxies.

    ABC News, Die Zeit, Universe Today, Reuters, Le Figaro and Deutsche Welle covered, among others, this new stage.

    This article was written in collaboration with generative AI company Alchemiq



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