The authors of the new work first observed the end of life of a red supergiant in real time: in front of their eyes the star exploded and turned into a Type II supernova. The star was first detected in the summer of 2020 by the huge amount of light it emitted.
Astronomers used the W. M. Keck Observatory to observe it. The team of scientists conducted transient studies as part of the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE), and they observed the red supergiant for the past 130 days.
The team captured a powerful flare: the first energy burst spectrum was named supernova 2020tlf or SN 2020tlf. From this information, astronomers have determined that there is dense circumstellar material surrounding the star at the time of the explosion.
Based on data from the Keck Observatory Spectrograph (DEIMOS) and the Echellette Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRES), they detected a red supergiant that emitted a flash of SN 2020tlf. The star is located in the galaxy NGC 5731, about 120 million light-years from Earth and 10 times more massive than the Sun.
The new study casts doubt on scientists’ early notions that red supergiant stars evolve just before they explode. The radiation the authors recorded came from a red supergiant in the last year before the explosion. In similar cases, at least some of the stars undergo significant changes in their internal structure, which then lead to a violent gas ejection moments before collapse.
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