For millennia humankind has peered into the night sky looking at stars far beyond the confines of our solar system. Now, in a first for our species, astronomers have captured an image of a star beyond our galaxy in the highest, up-close resolution ever.
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00:00For millennia, humankind has peered into the night sky, looking at stars far beyond the
00:08confines of our solar system.
00:10Now in a first for our species, astronomers have captured an image of a star beyond our
00:15galaxy in the highest up-close resolution ever.
00:18The light emitted from the star in this photo is some 160,000 years old, as the star itself
00:24resides 160,000 light years away.
00:27It's named WOH G64, and it's located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a dwarf galaxy
00:32orbiting our own Milky Way.
00:34The celestial object itself is classified as a red supergiant star, meaning that while
00:39it's much cooler than our sun, it's wildly much, much larger.
00:43Experts say it is upwards of 2,000 times the radius of our system's central star.
00:47In fact, that is one of the reasons they chose to image this one, its size making it a much
00:51easier target for telescopes.
00:53Experts note the egg-shaped cocoon which surrounds the star, certainly not business
00:57as usual for healthy ones.
00:58With astrophysicist Keiichi Onaka saying about it,
01:01We are excited because this may be related to the drastic ejection of material from the
01:05dying star before a supernova explosion.
01:08Experts are hailing the image as a landmark achievement, adding that this star is one
01:12of the most extreme of its kind.