Space scientists are amazed at how one of the largest celestial bodies, a giant star, has disappeared. TheStar that looks like a cometabout 75 million light-years away and located in the Kinman Dwarf Galaxy, suddenly can no longer be seen. You'd think it would be hard to unsee something that's 2.5 million times brighter than the sun. However, there is something strange going on with this massive object.
The star is of a type that scientists call a bright blue variable. Various astronomers studied the object intensively between 2001 and 2011. They then discovered that the monster star was at the end of its life. The researchers discovered that it had disappeared when they tried to look at the star. They wanted to learn more about how such massive stars disappear. Observations showed that the body appears to be in a late stage of its life. For this reason, this was a perfect target for the new research. Instead, scientists were surprised to find that the giant star had already disappeared. Dublin study director Andrew Allan said this in a statement.
However, it may also be that the star has lost its brightness and cannot be seen due to dust. An unusual fact would be if the star died out without exploding into a supernova and instead turned into a black hole. If so, this would be the first direct discovery of such a monster star ending its life in this way. Such a discovery could change our understanding of how easily a giant star can disappear. Based on current research, it is expected that it will erupt into a supernova at the end of its existence, but this does not seem to have happened. The Kinman Dwarf Galaxy is located in the constellation Aquarius and is so far away that astronomers cannot see certain stars. Instead, they can pick up the specific signatures of some of them.
Leave no trace
To make sure they didn't simply miss the expected event, the researchers directed a series of techniques on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope to the spot where it should have occurred. Despite months of work and various attempts, they were unable to find any trace of it. The researchers then reviewed old archival data and found that the star had been going through a busy period of activity. This probably ended in 2011. They hope that further work with even more technological tools might be able to show distant stars in more detail and reveal what happened to the missing star.
