Lurking bright blue star caught: The last piece of a supernova puzzle by Lucia Castaño Romero

Astronomers have found evidence of a hot binary companion star to a yellow supergiant star, which had become a bright supernova. Its existence had been predicted by the team. This finding provides the last link in a chain of observations that have so far supported the team's theoretical picture for this supernova.

A team led by Gastón Folatelli at the Kavli IPMU, the University of Tokyo, has found evidence of a hot binary companion star to a yellow supergiant star, which had become a bright supernova. The existence of the companion star had been predicted by the same team on the basis of numerical calculations. This finding provides the last link in a chain of observations that have so far supported the team's theoretical picture for this supernova. The results are published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and have wide implications for our knowledge of binary systems and supernova mechanisms.