The star in question was known as a luminous blue variable, similar to Eta Carinae, a massive and highly unstable star in our own Milky Way galaxy. "LBVs are a bit like volcanoes in the sense that these eruptions can occur over and over again, and the star can sometimes be dormant for many years," said University of California at Berkeley astronomer Nathan Smith, who previously proposed that the well-known supernova 1987A was caused by a luminous blue variable star. "By actually detecting the progenitor star as an object that appears to have been an LBV before it exploded, (Gal-Yam and collaborators) provide direct evidence that LBVs can in fact explode as supernovae," Smith wrote in an e-mail to Discovery News. "This...firms up the notion that in some cases LBVs, or stars masquerading as them, do indeed explode as some of the supernovae we see." Related Links: Irene Klotz's Blog: Free Space |
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