Discovered in the 1970s, WOH G64 has always appeared to be a red supergiant star surrounded by a ring, or torus, of dense dust.
An illustration of WOH G64’s binary system surrounded by a dense ring of dust. Pic Courtesy/Daniel Cea Martinez
Astronomers have witnessed one of our universe’s biggest stars transforming into a rare stellar body, and the dramatic metamorphosis may be the prequel to a powerful supernova explosion that sees this star birth a black hole.
WOH G64 (also known as IRAS 04553–6825) — is located in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way known as the Large Magellanic Cloud, around 163,000 light-years away. The star is around 1540 times the size of the sun, with almost 30 times the mass of our star and 282,000 times its brightness.
Discovered in the 1970s, WOH G64 has always appeared to be a red supergiant star surrounded by a ring, or torus, of dense dust. However, in 2014, the appearance of this supergiant began to change.
This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
