Cosmic Mystery – Massive Star Gone Missing
Few years ago, scientists observed a large luminous blue variable star. But when they wanted to check up on the star last year it was not there. Where did it go?
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Astronomers from the ESO recently encountered a true mystery. When trying to check up on a massive star they were surprised to not find it. And that should not happen. So far, we aren't sure how it happened, but we can speculate.
The galaxy in which the missing star is called Kinman's Dwarf or PHL 293B or HL 293B. It a faintly glowing dwarf galaxy which is about 75 million light-years away from us. And between 2001 and 2011 astronomers observed a strange massive these observations showed us a star close to the very end of its life.
Now, when Andrew Allan from the Irish Trinity College Dublin and his coworkers decided to do more research on the star and had the Very Large Telescope array pointed at Kinman's Dwarf a surprise was waiting for them. The dying large star was gone. Without a trace. It was quite shocking. Such large stars do not vanish without one hell of a bang.
The star in question was a Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) It was about 2.5 million brighter Suns. These stars tend to be very emotional and dramatically change both their spectrums and brightness. The star was a great show to watch. So when it was gone the scientists were quite sad.
But what could have happened? One of the possibilities is that the star collapsed into a black hole. But if that was the case it had to happen in a very nonstandard way. Another thing that never happens is to have an LBV star just turn into a black hole without a nice supernova explosion. Another option is that the star ejected so much matter before it died, and it is so much less bright, and possibly some of the ejected material is blocking the view.
Hopefully, the mystery should be solved once the Extremely Large Telescope (ESO) goes into operation in 2025.
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