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A study led by UW graduate student Trevor Dorn-Wallenstein has used the TESS space telescope to identify a new class of supergiant stars, called “fast yellow pulsating supergiants”. These stars may offer a solution to the “red supergiant problem”, which refers to the dearth of high-mass red supergiants (more than about 16 times the mass of the sun) that have been observed to explode as supernovae. Fast yellow pulsating supergiants are thought to have once been red supergiants that then evolved towards hotter temperatures, such that they become more yellow than red in color.
Read the full article at PhysicsWorld.