Astronomers may have finally seen a star become a black hole

As dinosaurs stomped across ancient Earth more than 200 million years ago, a massive star was entering its death throes. The resulting cosmic explosion was so unusual, it left astronomers scratching their heads when its glow at last reached our planet last June.

Now, the mysterious flash may have an origin story. Based on the latest observations of the strange supernova, nicknamed the Cow, a team of 45 astronomers argues that it may represent the first time humans have captured the exact moment a dying star gave birth to a black hole.

“This is the target we've been waiting for for years,” says team leader Raffaella Margutti, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University. Margutti and her colleagues presented their work this week at the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting in Seattle, Washington, and will soon be publishing their findings in the Astrophysical Journal.

The team's data, captured in multiple wavelengths of light, could also mean that a massive star collapsed into a neutron star, a kind of dense stellar corpse. And other teams studying the Cow have proposed alternative explanations for its unusual behavior. So what do we know about the Cow, and why has it been so hard for astronomers to describe? We've got you covered.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/01/astronomers-see-star-become-black-hole-neutron-star/