Evanston (Illinois) [US], January 18 (ANI): For the first time ever, astronomers have imaged in real-time the dramatic end to a red supergiant's life -- watching the massive star's rapid self-destruction and final death throes before collapsing into a type II supernova.
"This is a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die," said Wynn Jacobson-Galan, the study's lead author.
"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 watched a red supergiant star explode.".
The University of Hawaii Institute for AstronomyPan-STARRS on Haleakal, Maui, first detected the doomed massive star in summer 2020 via the huge amount of light radiating from the red supergiant.
The data showed direct evidence of dense circumstellar material surrounding the star at the time of explosion, likely the same gas that Pan-STARRS had imaged the red supergiant star violently ejecting earlier in the summer.
"It's like watching a ticking time bomb," said Raffaella Margutti, an adjunct associate professor at CIERA and the paper's senior author.
Based on data obtained from Keck Observatory's Deep Imaging and Multi-Object Spectrograph and Near Infrared Echellette Spectrograph, the researchers determined SN 2020tlf's progenitor red supergiant star -- located in the NGC 5731 galaxy about 120 million light-years away from Earth -- was 10 times more massive than the sun.
Margutti and Jacobson-Galan conducted most of the study during their time at Northwestern, with Margutti serving as an associate professor of physics and astronomy and member of CIERA, and Jacobson-Galan as a graduate student in Margutti's research group.
Margutti, Jacobson-Galan and their Northwestern co-authors are members of the Young Supernova Experiment, which uses the Pan-STARRS telescope to catch supernovae right after they explode
Updated: Jan 17, 2022 12:49 IST
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