Astronomers watched as the star WOH G64 transformed from a red supergiant into a rare, shortlived yellow supergiant star...in just 12 years.
It's a dramatic, rapid instability in a star that is rapidly headed toward a cataclysmic supernova explosion.
https://theconversation.com/one-of-the-biggest-stars-in-the-universe-might-be-getting-ready-to-explode-276519 #space #science #nature
WOH G64 is an enormous star, 2000 times the diameter of the Sun. If you put it in the Solar System, it would extend out to the orbit of Saturn!
It's so big that we can take a direct picture of it, even though it lies outside our own galaxy. The illustration offers a closer look at what's going on here.
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2417/ #science #nature #astronomy
Something dramatic happened to the star WOH G64 around 2014: maybe an interaction with a companion star, or the clearing of an enormous eruption.
The lines show how the star's spectrum completely changed between 2007 & 2016. We've never seen anything quite like this.
That, or somebody just cracked it open!
Corey S Powell
David Hopeward