Image courtesy of ESO/L. Calçada
Joel Kontinen
Space is wonderful, but stars can be fickle. Some
exoplanets seem to change their composition oddly. This happened to a star that
is about to explode as a supernova.
”One of the
largest stars in the known universe is undergoing a strangely rapid
transformation and may soon explode as a supernova.
First catalogued in 1981, WOH G64 sits some 160,000
light years from Earth in the Large
Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It is one of
the biggest red
supergiants, the largest stars we know of. These are massive, cool stars
that have run out of hydrogen fuel in their core and instead burn an envelope
of hydrogen gas that surrounds them.”
Source:
Chris Simms
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