Massive stars like those in WR 140 burn through their fuel quickly and have the potential to end their lives as brilliant supernovae. Right now, the red giant Betelgeuse is rising in the late evening. Of all the stars we can see with our eyes, Betelguese is the one closest to going supernova, but in all likelihood, it won’t go boom for many hundreds of thousands of years.

When we start using telescopes, however, there are a whole lot more stars to see and potentially see explode. The trick is figuring out which ones we need to watch.

A new paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society led by Benjamin Davies, however, gives us an early warning sign to watch for. According to this paper, red giants will shed their outermost atmosphere, and this material will hide their light, making them appear a hundred times fainter in visible light.

Now we just need a survey focused on looking for stars that fade away so we can focus on them to catch every stage of the soon-to-erupt supernova.

More Information

RAS press release

“Explosion imminent: the appearance of red supergiants at the point of core-collapse,” Ben Davies, Bertrand Plez, and Mike Petrault, 2022 October 13, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society