Lowell Observatory | 2018 Mar 27
Astronomers have discovered a rare “runaway” star that is speeding across its galaxy at 300,000 miles per hour (at that speed it would take about half a minute to travel from Los Angeles to New York). The runaway star (designated J01020100-7122208) is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a close neighbor of the Milky Way Galaxy, and is believed to have once been a member of a binary star system. When the companion star exploded as a supernova, the tremendous release of energy flung J01020100-7122208 into space at its high speed. The star is the first runaway yellow supergiant star ever discovered, and only the second evolved runaway star to be found in another galaxy.
After ten million years of traveling through space, the star evolved into a yellow supergiant, the object that we see today. Its journey took it 1.6 degrees across the sky, about three times the diameter of the full Moon. The star will continue speeding through space until it too blows up as a supernova, likely in another three million years or so. When that happens, heavier elements will be created, and the resulting supernova remnant may form new stars or even planets on the outer edge of the Small Magellanic Cloud. ...
A Runaway Yellow Supergiant Star in the Small Magellanic Cloud - Kathryn Neugent et al
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1803.02859 > 07 Mar 2018