In 2009, a giant star 25 times more massive than the Sun disappeared.
Yes, it’s not that simple. It went through periods of brightness, increasing its luminosity to that of a million suns, as if it were ready to explode into a supernova.
But then it fizzles out, instead of exploding. When astronomers tried to see the star using the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), Hubble, and Spitzer Space Telescope, they couldn’t see anything.
The star known as N6946-BH1 is now considered a failed supernova. The name BH1 is due to the fact that astronomers believe that the star fell into a black hole rather than triggering a supernova. But that’s just a guess.
All we know for sure is that it shines brightly for a while and then becomes too faint to be detected by our telescopes. But that changed thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
new study, Published on arXiv, analyzing data collected by JWST’s NIRCam and MIRI instruments. This shows a bright infrared source that appears to be the remnants of the crust of dust that surrounded the location of the original star. This is consistent with material being ejected from the star as it rapidly brightens.
It is also possible that it is infrared light from material falling into the black hole, although this is unlikely.
Picture BH1 shows three sources, not one. (Pisor dkk.2023)
Surprisingly, the team also found the remains of not just one object, but three.
This makes the possibility of the supernova model failing smaller. Previous observations of N6946-BH1 were a combination of these three sources because the resolution was not high enough to distinguish them.
So the most likely model is that the brightness that occurred in 2009 was caused by a merger of stars. What looks like a bright, massive star is a star system that shines when two stars merge and then disappear.
Although the data leans towards the merger model, it cannot rule out a failed supernova model. This makes our understanding of supernovae and stellar-mass black holes more complex.
We know from black hole mergers observed by LIGO and other gravitational wave observatories that stellar-mass black holes do exist and are relatively common. So some massive stars become black holes.
But whether they will become supernovas is still a question. An ordinary supernova can have enough mass to become a black hole, but it is difficult to imagine how the largest stellar black holes could form after a supernova.
N6946-BH1 is located in a galaxy 22 million light years away, so the fact that the James Webb Space Telescope can distinguish between different sources is impressive. This also gives astronomers hope of observing similar stars in time.
With more data, we should be able to distinguish between stellar mergers and truly failed supernovae, which will help us understand the final stages of stars as they move toward stellar-mass black holes.
This article was originally published by Current universe. Reading Original article.
2023-10-05 12:46:29
#huge #star #disappeared #James #Webb #Space #Telescope #figured #happened #Science #alert
