Скачать или смотреть Archived data from nasa's neowise mission reveals star turning into black hole

Astronomers have been able to follow, for the first time in such detail, the rare process in which a massive star dies without exploding in a dramatic supernova and instead silently collapses to form a black hole;

This discovery came from analyzing old data collected by NASA's NEOWISE mission, which observed the sky in infrared light, combined with information from other space and ground-based telescopes over nearly two decades, from 2005 to 2023.

The object in question is a supergiant star called M31-2014-DS1, located in the Andromeda galaxy, about 2.5 million light years from Earth.
This star, which at the end of its life was about five times the mass of the Sun after losing material over time, began to show striking changes in 2014: Its infrared brightness suddenly increased, indicating that it was shedding its outer layers in a thick shell of gas and dust.
This heated material emitted intense infrared light.

Starting in 2016, however, the star began to fade rapidly.
In visible light, its brightness has dropped more than 10,000-fold by 2023, making it virtually invisible even to the most powerful telescopes.
The researchers concluded that the star's core, with no more nuclear fuel to sustain the internal pressure, collapsed under its own extreme gravity, directly forming a stellar black hole.
The outer layers, instead of being thrown away in an explosion, fell back toward the center or formed a dense cloud around them, completely obscuring the star's light.

This type of stellar death, called a "failed supernova" or direct collapse, had been predicted by theories since the 1970s, but direct observational evidence was rare.
Here, archived NEOWISE data captured exactly what was expected: the temporary infrared glow caused by material ejection and gradual disappearance, leaving behind only a faint, reddish residue shrouded in dust.

The discovery not only offers the clearest view yet of the birth of a stellar black hole, but also suggests that this silent path may be more common than previously thought for certain massive stars.
Scientists have identified yet another star possibly undergoing the same process, reinforcing the idea that black holes can emerge without the spectacle of a traditional supernova.

The study, supported by NASA's Astrophysics Data Analysis program, was published in the journal Science in February 2026. It highlights the value of maintaining and reusing old data from missions like NEOWISE - originally designed to hunt for near-Earth asteroids - to unlock deep mysteries of the universe, such as how some of the heaviest stars end their lives and contribute to the population of black holes in the cosmos.