Dying star coughs out dust cloud`
By IANSMonday, January 17, 2011
LONDON - Astronomers on the look out for black holes have stumbled on a star that was fading with a whimper rather than a bang.
Astronomers first spotted the supernova in a galaxy, some three billion light years from the Earth, in late August 2007 using NASA’s Spitzer space telescope.
A supernova, the result of a dying star, first explodes outwards, then shrinks into itself to form an extremely dense, cold ball. Sometimes a neutron star results and sometimes a black hole, according to a NASA statement.
The astronomers detected that heat flared from the object for just over six months, then faded away in early March 2008, the Daily Mail reports.
This told them it was probably a supernova, and the readings for light energy absorbed by the object and heat dissipated by it strongly implied it was surrounded by dust.
It is believed this peculiar event - the first one of its kind ever viewed by astronomers - was more common early in the universe.
It hints at one possible future for the brightest star system in our very own Milky Way.
