A University of Virginia doctoral student and a team of astronomers have, for the first time, captured radio waves from a rare class of exploding star, giving them an unprecedented look into the final years of a massive star before its death in a powerful stellar explosion called a supernova.
Their findings, , focus on a stellar explosion called a “Type Ibn supernova.” These explosions occur when a massive star blasts apart into clouds of helium-rich gas that it shed shortly before death.
University of Virginia astronomy doctoral student Raphael Baer-Way’s work opens a new window into the final years of massive stars’ lives. (Photo by Avery Wagner)
Using the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico, the researchers tracked faint radio signals from the explosion for roughly 18 months. The radio waves revealed telltale signs of gas the star ejected years before it blew apart – information that cannot be captured with optical telescopes alone.
Raphael Baer-Way, a third-year doctoral student in astronomy at UVA and lead author of the study, said, “We were able to use radio observations to ‘view’ the final decade of the star’s life before the explosion. It’s like a time machine into those last important years – especially the final five, when the star was losing mass intensely.”
Baer-Way explained stars that explode as supernovae in other galaxies are usually too dim and far away to observe directly. But if a star sheds a lot of mass before its demise, that gas can act as a mirror, revealing the star’s final stages as the explosion’s shockwave crashes into it and produces strong radio waves.
Baer-Way said his team found evidence the star was likely in a binary system – two stars orbiting each other – and that interaction with a companion may have driven the dramatic mass loss immediately before the explosion.
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