red supergiant star explode tagged posts

‘For the first time, we watched a red supergiant star explode,’ researcher says. 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.

Led by researchers at Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), the team observed the red supergiant during its last 130 days leading up to its deadly detonation.

The discovery defies previous ideas of how red supergiant stars evolve right before exploding. Earlier observations showed that red supergiants were relatively quiescent before their deaths — with no evidence of violent eruptions or luminous emissions...