of ndtv Report According to, when a star is in its last moments, explosions start in it. During this time it becomes very shiny. It is called supernova. Bringing the recent discovery to the world, Keiichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist from Chile’s Andres Bello University, said that for the first time we have been able to take a zoom image of a dying star in another galaxy outside our galaxy.
This image was captured using the gravity instrument aboard the European Southern Observatory (ESO)’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). The size of this star is about 2 thousand times more than our Sun.
Scientists have been searching for the stars for two decades
Scientists have been exploring this giant star for almost two decades. In 2005 and 2007, Ohnaka and his team used the VLTI telescope to investigate the properties of the star. A study was done on that. When second generation high-tech instruments were installed in VLTI, the giant star was captured again.
Researchers believe that the gas and dust present around the star may be the reason for the dimness of its cocoon and the huge size of the star. However, it is yet to be known when the star will start exploding and it will move towards becoming a supernova.