Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and other astronomical observing instruments have for the first time witnessed the direct death of a star 60 million light-years away and go supernova in ‘real time’, which may provide a ‘alert system’ for other stars. The supernova, known as SN 2020fqv, is found in interacting butterfly galaxies in the constellation Virgo.
Scientists were able to obtain ‘unprecedented’ details of the event, taking photographs both before and after the explosion occurred.
“We used to talk about supernova work like we were crime scene investigators, where we would show up after the fact and try to figure out what happened to that star,” says Ryan Foley, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. . it’s a statement. “This is a different situation, because we really know what’s going on and we really see death in real time.”
“Rarely can we examine this circumstellar material so well, since it is only visible for a very short time and, in general, we do not begin to observe a supernova until at least a few days after the explosion”, clarifies Samaporn Tinyanont, co-author of the work . “For this supernova, we were able to make ultra-fast observations with Hubble, which provided unprecedented coverage of the region right next to the exploding star.”
Known as ‘the Rosetta stone of supernovae’, the SN 2020fqv supernova has allowed the verification of the star’s mass (about 14-15 times the mass of the sun) with various methods, helping astronomers learn more. about how stars live and die.
” This is the first time that we have been able to verify the mass with three different methods and they are all consistent, ” added Tinyanont. “Now we can move forward using these different methods and combining them, because there are many other supernovae where we have masses of one method but not another. As we find more and more of these supernovae with this kind of excellent data set, we will be able to understand. better what is happening in the last years of the life of a star “ , concludes the expert.
