Astronomers have identified the star that may be responsible for a supernova discovered by skywatchers last week, SPACE.com has learned.
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"By lining up the stars that surround the supernova in the new picture and the old picture, you can then see what, if anything, was at the position of the supernova in the old Hubble picture," said University of California, Berkeley astronomer Alex Filippenko, a member of Elias-Rosa's team. "What we found is a star that looks like it's a red supergiant."
The unnamed suspect was a massive star in the late stages of evolution. It is these types of stars that are thought to run out of fuel for the nuclear fusion that powers their cores, then collapse in on themselves to become black holes or neutron stars, releasing huge amounts of energy in luminous explosions seen around the universe.
"It's precisely the type of star you expect," Filippenko told SPACE.com.
Follow-up spectroscopic measurements, which break up light into its constituent wavelengths, show that the supernova contains hydrogen, classifying it as a Type II supernova, one thought to be born from the death throes of such massive stars.
Still, the images aren't precise enough to confirm that this star was the source of the blast. The team has plans to observe the spot again early next week using the adaptive optics system on the Keck telescope on Mauna Kea. This high-resolution tool produces extremely crisp pictures by compensating for the atmospheric turbulence that causes images to blur.
"With that we will be able to more precisely locate exactly where the supernova is and compare that more-accurate position to see if the star we identified is exactly coincident with the supernova," Filippenko said.
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