WOH G64, a red supergiant in the Large Magellanic CloudWOH G64 red supergiant in the Large Magellanic Cloud. ESO/K. Ohnaka et al.

Astronomers published the first close-up picture of a star outside our galaxy, located over 160,000 light-years away.

Thanks to the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at ESO, astronomers have captured the first close-up image of a star outside our galaxy, over 160,000 light-years away. Surrounded by a vast dust cocoon, the star is in its final stages before exploding as a supernova.

“For the first time, we have succeeded in taking a zoomed-in image of a dying star in a galaxy outside our own Milky Way,” says Keiichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist from Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile.

WOH G64, a red supergiant in the Large Magellanic CloudWOH G64 red supergiant in the Large Magellanic Cloud. ESO/K. Ohnaka et al.

This breakthrough focuses on WOH G64, a red supergiant in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy orbiting the Milky Way. With a size about 2,000 times that of our Sun, this “behemoth star” has long intrigued astronomers. While detailed images of stars within our galaxy are not uncommon, observing a star in another galaxy in such detail marks an extraordinary achievement.

Location of the First Close-Up Picture of a Star Outside our GalaxyWOH G64 red supergiant in the Large Magellanic Cloud. ESO/K. Ohnaka et al/Y. Beletsky (LCO)

“We discovered an egg-shaped cocoon closely surrounding the star,” says Ohnaka, the lead author of a study reporting the observations published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics. “We are excited because this may be related to the drastic ejection of material from the dying star before a supernova explosion.”

WOH G64, a red supergiant in the Large Magellanic CloudWOH G64 red supergiant in the Large Magellanic Cloud. ESO/K. Ohnaka et al.

source ESO