For the first time, astronomers have captured a detailed image of a star outside the Milky Way. The star WOH G64, a red giant located 160,000 light-years from Earth, has a mass 2,000 times greater than that of the Sun and is at the end of its life. This extraordinary result was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics and is the result of the work of a research team from the Chilean University Andrés Bello.
The credit for this discovery goes to the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) of the European Southern Observatory, located in the Chilean Atacama Desert.
The VLTI acts as a virtual telescope, combining the light collected by four telescopes that make up the Very Large Telescope (VLT) to obtain high-precision images. This innovative technology has allowed researchers, led by Keiichi Ohnaka, to create a real portrait of the star WOH G64. Although this star was already known to astronomers, only now has it been possible to highlight its peculiarities thanks to the advanced instruments of the VLTI.
The new observations reveal that WOH G64 is surrounded by an elongated, egg-shaped shell of gas and dust. During the final stages of their lives, red supergiants like WOH G64 tend to shed their outer layers in a process that can take millennia. The current image highlights how the star has dimmed since previous observations, suggesting that the time when it will transform into a supernova may be rapidly approaching. As the star gradually fades, acquiring further close-up images will become increasingly difficult even for the VLTI. However, scientists hope that future upgrades planned by ESO to the telescope’s instrumentation will facilitate further observations.
This discovery represents a significant step in understanding stellar dynamics and their ultimate evolution. The ability to capture detailed images of distant stars offers new opportunities to explore the universe and its past. As technology continues to advance, more exciting discoveries are expected to be on the horizon in astronomy.
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