Hubble witnessed the transformation of a star into a black hole.

When a massive star exhausts its fuel, its core shrinks to a dense object and expels the remaining gas in a supernova event. The resulting object is either a neutron star or a black hole.

Recently, Hubble Space Telescope may have captured the moment when a black hole took over a fading supernova. Typically, supernova events result in the formation of debris clouds, also known as nebulae, that can last for thousands of years, such as SN 1054.

However, in this instance, it appears that the star began exploding but then its gas was drawn back into the central black hole. This is a rare occurrence that happens when the star’s core collapse is exceptionally large, causing the gas to fall directly into the core instead of exploding. While only a few of these “major events” have been observed, astronomers are cautiously optimistic about the results. The star in question, located in galaxy NGC 6946, is bright enough to be visible from 22 million light-years away and dims rapidly, indicating the presence of a massive stellar-mass black hole.

An artist’s impression depicts a massive star exploding rather than undergoing a supernova.

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