Cosmic Bubble Bath: Supergiant Star Exhales Most Massive Ejection Cloud Ever Found!
Get ready for some mind-boggling astronomical news! Scientists have just unveiled the discovery of the largest cloud of ejected material ever found surrounding a supergiant star. This cosmic behemoth, expelled by the star Stephenson 2 DFK 52, stretches an incredible 1.4 light-years across, which is roughly 13 trillion kilometers!
A Stellar Spectacle
Astronomers utilized the powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study Stephenson 2 DFK 52, a red supergiant star located approximately 19,000 light-years away in the constellation Scutum. The team was investigating other supergiants in the vicinity and expected to find a significant ejection cloud around DFK 52, given its similarity to other well-known red supergiants like Betelgeuse.
However, the sheer scale of the material expelled by DFK 52 is unprecedented. To put this into perspective, if Stephenson 2 DFK 52 were as close to Earth as Betelgeuse, the cocoon of ejected material would appear as wide as a third of a full Moon in our night sky!
Why So Much Ejection?
A natural question arises: how can a star of such immense size, with a powerful gravitational pull, eject such a colossal amount of material? While the exact mechanisms are still under investigation, the immense size and evolutionary stage of red supergiants like DFK 52 lead to complex and often violent processes. These stars are in their final stages of life, experiencing significant mass loss through powerful stellar winds and pulsations. This outward expulsion of gas and dust creates these spectacular nebulae that can envelop the star for light-years.
This discovery not only showcases the extreme nature of these massive stars but also provides invaluable data for understanding the processes that shape the interstellar medium and contribute to the cycle of cosmic matter.
Credit: ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. Siebert et al.
