NASA Hubble Space Telescope Captures an Explosion of a Star; What is This Weird Supernova?

Scientists have seen for the first time how a star transforms into a supernova in its final stages with the aid of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

Since Hubble discovered this strangely yellow pre-supernova star, astrophysicists said per CNN that they have to re-evaluate what's conceivable at the deaths of our Universe's most massive stars.

In a new report published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the team describes the unusual star and the supernova produced. The study is titled "A Cool and Inflated Progenitor Candidate for the Type Ib Supernova 2019yvr at 2.6 Yr Before Explosion."

Charles Kilpatrick, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University's Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA), said in a statement that they hadn't seen this scenario before.

Mystery Star: Hubble Space Telescope Helps Scientists See How 2019yvr Burst

Although the occurrence appears to be predictable, the Hubble Space Telescope did detect a normal explosion. What astronomers discovered about the star was truly fascinating.

Cold, yellow stars are usually covered in hydrogen at the end of their lives, concealing the star's hot, blue interior. However, this yellow star in the Virgo galaxy cluster, 35 million light-years from Earth, was mysteriously missed this critical hydrogen sheet at the time of its explosion.

Scientists called the supernova 2019yvr a one-of-a-kind find during the phenomenon. When the aforementioned celestial body exploded into a supernova, they discovered it had no hydrogen.

Experts were taken aback by this unusual occurrence. However, their discoveries about stellar bodies have prompted them to search for another solution to the astronomical puzzle.

"If a star explodes without hydrogen, it should be extremely blue - really, really hot. It's almost impossible for a star to be this cool without having hydrogen in its outer layer," Kilpatrick explained in a report by Phys.org.

They also looked for other stars to correlate to this strange supernova, and they concluded that for a supernova to occur, the star must be hydrogen-rich.

Experts Reviews Hubble Space Telescope's Catalog

BGR said scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope's catalog to find an old image of the exploded star from a few years before it erupted into the vastness of space.

They also discovered that a surrounding cloud of hydrogen interacted with the star's mass at the point where it exploded. As a result, scientists have devised a hypothesis that could shed light on the peculiar case's mystery.

The team believed that the stars went through some death throes before exploding into a supernova. This scenario contributed to the discovery that there had been previous eruptions before the actual blast.

As a result, the star's mass was significantly reduced, explaining why the hydrogen appears to "escape" from the star. It's possible that the continuous discharge lasted decades.

The first explanation revolved around the star's lack of hydrogen as it exploded. Another hypothesis suggested by the experts is that a nearby star could deplete the outer layer of hydrogen before the emission occurs.

At the moment, these hypotheses are being thoroughly investigated and observed so that astronomers can confirm what happened before the supernova surfaced in the future.

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