Click here to watch more Space.com videos.
It's easier for scientists to see the aftermath of stellar explosions than it is to watch the drama.
Astronomers were able to observe a red giant star just as it exploded. A team of scientists gathered observations of a red supergiant star using a telescope in Hawaii. In September, that same star died in a supernova called (SN) 2020tlf, which team members called "one of the most intriguing" supernovas of its type.
The lead author of the new study, Wynn Jacobson-Galn, an astronomy National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at the University of California Berkeley, said in a statement that the results were a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die. We watched a red supergiant star explode for the first time.
There are great images of star explosions.
An artist's depiction of a red supergiant star before it explodes. The image was taken by W. M. Keck Observatory.
The star that exploded was a red supergiant that was about 10 times the mass of the sun and was located 120 million light-years from Earth in the NGC 5731 galaxy.
Astronomers pulled together observations of the region from a host of telescopes, beginning in January 2020 and continuing for nearly a full year after the explosion. After the star went boom, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory joined the work.
The scientists were given a sense of what the neighborhood was like, how the star was behaving in its final days and how the supernova unfolded.
The astronomer was particularly interested in the observations of the star gathered within the last four months before the super nova. The activity of the SN 2020tlf suggests that some of the stars may put up red flags.
"It's like watching a time bomb explode," said senior author Raffaella Margutti, an astronomer at UC Berkeley. "We have never confirmed violent activity in a dying red supergiant star where we see it produce a glowing emission, then collapse and explode, until now."
The final days before a supernova event are the time when the red supergiants are spotted.
"I am most excited by all of the new unknowns that have been unlocked by this discovery," she said. The discovery of more events like SN 2020tlf will impact how we define the final months of stellar evolution, unifying observers and theorists in the quest to solve the mystery on how massive stars spend the final moments of their lives.
The new study was published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Follow her on social media: EmailMeghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com Follow us on social media.
