This is the first photo of a star outside our galaxy

Astronomers photographed a star outside the Milky Way for the first time, the European Southern Observatory announced. Star WOH G64 it is located 160,000 light years from Earth, and is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy. Scientists have known about this star for decades, and because it is about 2000 times larger than the Sun, it is also called a ‘giant star’.

Foto: European Southern Observatory

Although astronomers have taken about twenty photos of magnified stars from our galaxy, until now it was not possible to photograph those outside our galaxy due to their great distances. The team, led by astrophysicist Keiichi Ohnaka, imaged this star using the European Southern Observatory’s Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI).

Foto: European Southern Observatory

Ohnaka’s team has been interested in this star for a long time, but they had to wait for the development of one of the VLTI’s second-generation instruments, GRAVITY, for photography. After comparing their photos with previous observations of the star, they were surprised to see that it was getting fainter.

– We discovered that the star has undergone a significant change in the last ten years, which gave us a rare opportunity to monitor the star’s changes in real time, said Gerd Weigelt, a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. ka. In their final stages of life, these red giants like WOH G64 shed their outer layers of gas and dust in a process that can take thousands of years.

– This red star is one of the most extreme of its kind because any drastic change could bring it to an explosive end, adds Jacco van Loon, director of the observatory at Keele University, UK.

As the star grows fainter, taking other close-up photos becomes increasingly difficult. Scientists, on the other hand, promise that by updating the instruments of the telescope, such as the future GRAVITY+, they will enable new photos.