{"id":27106,"date":"2024-11-21T08:00:31","date_gmt":"2024-11-21T13:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=27106"},"modified":"2024-11-20T15:21:18","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T20:21:18","slug":"eso-first-close-up-image-of-a-star-outside-of-the-milky-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=27106","title":{"rendered":"ESO: First close-up image of a star outside of the Milky Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new report from the European Southern Observatory (ESO<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Astronomers take the first close-up picture<\/strong>
\n of a star outside our galaxy<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
This is an image of the star WOH G64, taken by the GRAVITY instrument on the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO\u2019s VLTI). This is the first close-up picture of a star outside our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The star is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, over 160 000 light-years away. The bright oval at the centre of this image is a dusty cocoon that enshrouds the star. A fainter elliptical ring around it could be the inner rim of a dusty torus, but more observations are needed to confirm this feature.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cFor the first time, we have succeeded in taking a zoomed-in image of a dying star in a galaxy outside our own Milky Way,\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

says Keiichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist from Universidad Andr\u00e9s Bello in Chile. Located a staggering 160 000 light-years from us, the star WOH G64 was imaged thanks to the impressive sharpness offered by the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO\u2019s VLTI). The new observations reveal a star puffing out gas and dust, in the last stages before it becomes a supernova.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe discovered an egg-shaped cocoon closely surrounding the star<\/em>,\u201d says Ohnaka, the lead author of a study reporting the observations published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics<\/em>. \u201cWe are excited because this may be related to the drastic ejection of material from the dying star before a supernova explosion<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

While astronomers have taken about two dozen zoomed-in images of stars in our galaxy, unveiling their properties, countless other stars dwell within other galaxies, so far away that observing even one of them in detail has been extremely challenging. Up until now.<\/p>\n