Astronomers witness the explosive death of a giant star for first time

The lead author of the new study is Margutti’s graduate student, astrophysicist Wynn Jacobson-Galán, who was also at Northwestern for the observations but has since joined UC Berkeley.Jacobson-Galán said that the star was detected in the summer of 2020 during a survey by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS telescope on the peak of the Haleakalā volcano on Maui.Although the star was in a galaxy about 120 million  light-years away — both the star and the galaxy are too faint to be seen by the naked eye — the data from Pan-STARRS showed the star had become much brighter than usual, he said.The scientists then kept watch on the star with the Pan-STARRS telescope, which showed it was violently ejecting large amounts of gas.When the final supernova explosion did occur, they were able to capture the powerful flash it emitted — for a brief moment, it was brighter than all the other stars in that galaxy combined — thanks to CIERA’s ability to remotely operate the telescopes at the W.M Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea on  Hawaii.The supernova flash and the observations that followed showed the star was surrounded by shells of gas when it exploded — probably the same gas it had emitted in the month leading up to the detonation.A few other supernovas have been seen before, but not of this type.