Hey Candlemonk Family!
I just got to know about a star that suddenly disappeared from the sky. It may sound silly but there are many people who keep a watch on the space bodies all the time. The star that vanished is from the Aquarius Constellation.
Are you curious to know what happened? Let's unfold this mystery.
First things first, we're talking about a star. What is a star actually?
A star is an astronomical object consisting of a luminous spheroid of plasma, held together by their own gravity. Stars are huge celestial bodies made mostly of Hydrogen and helium that produce light and heat from the churning nuclear forges inside their core.
Today we'll focus on "Kinman Dwarf" Or PHL 293B, the star name which lies approximately 75 million light years away.
This star is considered to be 2.5 million times brighter than our sun. Scientists and astronomers are observing this star since 2001 and they state the star shined most brightly in 2010 and 2011.
By their observation they discovered that this star is in its late stage of evolution.
This made the observers more curious for this star.
In 2019, ESO's very large telescope couldn't find this star.
They didn't find the star at it's place and what's even more interesting is that there were no signs of star explosion.
It is very difficult for the observers to understand how it disappeared, they're observing it from over a decade.
It would be highly unusual for such a massive star to disappear without producing a bright supernova explosion.
Typically, at the end of a star's life, it will go supernova before turning into either a black hole or neutron star.
This violent stage of a star is hard to miss and can last for years.
Had it been exploded, astronomers would have seen it, captured it and it would be still visible to them.
The observing team used the Echelle SPectrograph for Rockyexoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations (ESPRESSO) instrument attatched to the VLT, to make their initial observations in August 2019.
They failed to find the star signals with ESPRESSO - one of the most precise and powerful planet hunting devices on earth.
The researchers have given 3 possible assumptions.
1) A layer of cold thick fog of gasses must have blocked the star from being visible to us.
2) The star turned into a black hole without a supernova explosion, which tells us that a star is capable or evolution into a black hole without a supernova explosion.
3) when the observers view this star in 2011, they were seeing an exploded star.
These are just assumptions, no one knows what actually happened. But this was interesting isn't it!!
Hope you liked this article.
Have a great Day Fam!
