Scientists have been cataloguing star systems for three years to try to capture them as they meet their ends. Researchers have noticed one star system in the Whirlpool Galaxy, which was brightening and dimming in an unusual way, has produced a supernova. The development could help researchers predict when a star may expire in the future as they try to determine whether the change in brightness was linked to the end of its life. The results of the three-year study by scientists at Ohio State University were published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Christopher Kochanek, professor of astronomy at Ohio State and the Ohio Eminent Scholar in Observational Cosmology, said: "Our underlying goal is to look for any kind of signature behaviour that will enable us to identify stars before they explode. "It’s a speculative goal at this point, but at least now we know that it’s possible."Postdoctoral researcher Dorota Szczygiel, who led the study of this supernova, added: "The odds are extremely low that we would just happen to be observing a star for several years before it went supernova. We would have to be extremely lucky. "With this galaxy survey, we’re making our own luck. We’re studying all the variable stars in 25 galaxies, so that when one of them happens to go supernova, we've already compiled data on it."