Despite the large number of stars in the sky, the discovery of a star in the heart supernova Still an extremely rare event. Now, astronomers have arrested a red supernova before, during and after the first supernova explosion, gathers Important new information about these dramatic events.
“This is a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do before they die,” said lead author Wynn Jacobson-Galán (UC Berkeley). “The direct detection of pre-supernova activity in a red supergiant star has never been observed before in an ordinary Type II supernova. For the first time, we have witnessed it.” an exploding red supergiant star!”
Use Pan-STARRS Telescope in Maui, Hawai’i, scientists discovered the red supergiant star that perished in the summer of 2020 thanks to the huge amount of light it emitted. Later in the fall as it formed a supernova, the team captured the intense flash using Keck ObservatoryLow Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS)’s. They also captured the first spectrum of the supernova, known as SN 2020tlf.
Observations suggest that the star was capable of ejecting large amounts of dense circumstantial matter shortly before the explosion. Previous observations have shown that red giants are relatively calm before reaching supernovae, so the new data suggests that some may change their internal structure significantly before exploding. That could then lead to turbulent eruptions of gas before collapsing.
SN 2020tlf is located in the galaxy NGC 5731 about 120 million light-years from Earth and is 10 times as massive as the Sun. Stars go to supernovas when they run out of fuel and collapse under their own gravity, creating a giant thermonuclear explosion. For that to happen, they must be massive enough (8 to 15 times the mass of the Sun) or they will eventually collapse into a white dwarf like our Sun. Any bigger than that and they can collapse into one black hole.
This discovery will allow scientists to survey red supergiant stars in search of similar types of luminous radiation that could signal another supernova. “The discovery of more events like SN 2020tlf will have a significant impact on how we determine the final months of stellar evolution … in our quest to solve the mystery of how,” said Jacobson-Galán. great stars go through their last moments of life”.
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