A closer look at the dust-covered red supergiant star WOH G64 has been taken by astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI).
WOH G64 is situated in the constellation of Dorado, some 160,000 light-years away.
Additionally referred to as TIC 30186593, IRAS 04553-6825, or 2MASS J04551048-6820298, the star is a component of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a group of minor galaxies that orbit our own Milky Way Galaxy.
The size of WOH G64 is around 2,000 times that of our Sun, making it a red supergiant.
An astrophysicist from the Universidad Andrés Bello named Dr. Keiichi Ohnaka stated, "We found an egg-shaped cocoon closely surrounding the star."
"This could be connected to the extreme material ejection from the dying star prior to a supernova explosion, which excites us."
"Although scientists have captured roughly two dozen close-ups of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy, revealing their characteristics, there are innumerable other stars that reside in other galaxies, so distant that it has been very difficult to observe even one of them in detail — until now."
WOH G64 had long piqued the interest of Dr. Ohnaka and associates.
They continued to investigate the star in the years that followed, using VLTI to discover more about its characteristics back in 2005 and 2007. However, a real picture of the star had eluded them.
They had to wait for the creation of GRAVITY, one of the VLTI's second-generation instruments, in order to obtain the needed image.
They were shocked to see that the star has dimmed over the previous ten years when they compared their new findings with other earlier observations of WOH G64.
"In the past decade, we have discovered that the star has undergone a notable transformation, offering us a unique chance to observe a star's life in real time," said Professor Gerd Weigelt, an astronomer from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy.
It can take thousands of years for red supergiants like WOH G64 to shed their outer coats of gas and dust during their last phases of existence.
According to Dr. Jacco van Loon, director of Keele Observatory at Keele University, "this star is one of the most extreme of its kind, and any drastic change may bring it closer to an explosive end."
According to the astronomers, "the dimming and the unexpected shape of the dust cocoon around the star may also be due to these shed materials."
The researchers were taken aback by the new image, which revealed that the cocoon is stretched out, as they had anticipated a different shape based on earlier observations and computer simulations.
They think that either the star's shedding or the influence of an unidentified partner star could account for the egg-like form of the cocoon.
Even with VLTI, it is getting harder to get other close-up images of the star as it gets fainter.
However, this is expected to change shortly because to planned instrumentation upgrades for the telescope, such the upcoming GRAVITY+.
Understanding what is happening in the star will need similar follow-up investigations with ESO tools, Dr. Ohnaka stated.
The Astronomy & Astrophysics journal published the team's work.
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