Most detailed glimpse yet of doomed star captured by astronomers

By Stephen Beech

The most detailed glimpse yet of a doomed star hidden in dust before it exploded has been captured by astronomers.

Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team identified a supernova’s source star, or progenitor, for the first time.

The observations – combined with archival images from the Hubble Space Telescope – revealed the explosion came from a massive red supergiant star, cloaked in an unexpected shroud of dust.

The discovery may help solve the decades-old mystery of why massive red supergiants rarely explode.

Theoretical models predict red supergiants should make up the majority of core-collapse supernovae.

The new study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters , shows those stars do explode but are simply hidden out of sig