Scientists witness never-before-seen moment during supernova explosion

United States stellar researchers have spotted a cosmic blast at 2.2 billion light years of distance of an expiring star known as 2021yfj which gave a rare inside look of life cycle to the scientists.

The collapsing star’s pictures show its outermost layers of helium and hydrogen which had blown off long ago, not unexpectedly. Dense stellar material, especially innermost core layers of sulfur and silicon ejected in the explosion during star evolution.

“We have never observed a star that was stripped to this amount,” Steve Schulze revealed, who is reseacher at Northwestern University and scientific discovery team member that published the research in the British journal Nature on August 20, 2025.

Anya Nugent, an astrophysics student at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, commented on this finding: “Because so many of the layers had been stripped off this star, this basically confirmed what those layers were.”

Star development stages evidence gives scientists ideas about large star size before it bursts to death and tells that the lighter elements stay outside and keep mass substances near the core.

The cause of layers shed off is still unknown, which led to removal of many outer layers of one in ten thousands supernova before explosion.

The Milky Way galaxy stars has survival tenure from millions to trillions of years until their demise. 

NASA, SpaceX, European Space Agency and International Space Station are among those who are leading the most contributions charts in space science discoveries through different modes.