We're seeing many spectacular sights out in space as our telescopes become more powerful, but there's a new contender for the most exciting one yet: According to researchers, we've observed a red supergiant star exploding into a supernova for the fir
Supernova 2020tlf, to give it its technical name, was watched for 130 days leading up to the gigantic blast, the result of the demise of a star some 120 million light-years away from Earth in the NGC 5731 galaxy and about 10 times more massive than our own Sun.
Supernovas happen when massive stars die, or run out of fuel and collapse in on themselves, no longer to keep the forces of gravity and nuclear reactions in balance. A giant, super-bright explosion follows the collapse, sending shock waves through space, and usually leaving a dense core surrounded by a cloud of gas called a nebula.
The collected data is already providing new insights. There was direct evidence of dense circumstellar material surrounding the star when it exploded, for example, which the researchers think was the same gas they had spotted being ejected from the red supergiant several months before., also from UC Berkeley."We've never confirmed such violent activity in a dying red supergiant star where we see it produce such a luminous emission, then collapse and combust, until now.