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 No
Astronomers used a powerful telescope to detect an unusually active red supergiant star some 120 million light-years away. They watched it closely for 130 days, giving themselves an invaluable view of the grand supernova finale, when the massive star exploded.
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 f