Detailed images of distant star captured

The first detailed images of the surface and atmosphere of a star 500 light-years from earth have been captured by astronomers.

Antares - a red supergiant star - is more than 500 light-years from Earth and astronomers have now captured the first detailed images of its surface and atmosphere.

A team of astronomers took the images using a four large telescopes perched on a mountain in the Paranal desert of northern Chile.

The star - which sits in the Scorpio constellation - makes an interesting object for study because it's rapidly losing mass in the course of an outward expansion that will eventually lead to a supernova.

The images were published in Nature magazine.

"How stars like Antares lose mass so quickly in the final phase of their evolution has been a problem for over half a century," the paper's lead author, Keiichi Ohnaka of Chile's Universidad Catolica del Norte, said.

The images allowed the team to detect unexpected turbulence in the outer atmosphere of Antares, activity that cannot be explained by any known processes.

"The next challenge is to identify what's driving the turbulent motions," Ohnaka said.