The Star That Keeps Faking Its Own Death: Chandra Cracks the Mystery of Supernova Impostor AT 2016blu
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia — For fifteen years, a giant star in a distant spiral galaxy has been putting on a show that fooled even seasoned astronomers. Every few months it flares so violently that it looks like a supernova, the cataclysmic death of a massive star — and then, impossibly, it survives, dims, and does it all over again. Now, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has caught the culprit in the act. A new study published on Monday, 9 November 2026, in The Astrophysical Journal reveals that the star, known as AT 2016blu, is being repeatedly disturbed by a previously hidden companion — either a stellar-mass black hole or a neutron star — that pulls material from the giant every 113 days as the two orbit each other. Illustration: A massive luminous blue variable star erupting with brilliant flares in the spiral galaxy NGC 4559, about 30 million light-years from Earth. What Happened Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered what is triggering...