Sydney astronomers have discovered a unique star system 8000 light years away that's about to explode in a supernova.
University of Sydney astronomers, working with international colleagues, say it's the first known star system in our Milky Way galaxy to produce what's called a "gamma-ray burst" when it explodes - a massive energetic event.
The star system comprises two stars orbiting each other every hundred years or so, according to researchers at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy. The findings have been published in Nature Astronomy.
"We discovered this star as an outlier in a survey with a radio telescope operated by the University of Sydney," said lead author of the study, Dr Joe Callingham.
"We knew immediately we had found something quite exceptional."
The star system has been nicknamed Apep after the serpentine Egyptian god of chaos, as one of the stars is on the brink of a huge supernova - an event that occurs upon the death of certain types of large stars.
No gamma-ray burst has ever been detected within the Milky Way, which is why the Sydney astronomers' discovery is so ground-breaking.
The inner area where the star system was discovered - in the southern constellation of Norma - is described as an "elegantly sculpted plume of gas".
Wind streaming off the stars travels as fast as 12 million kilometres per hour, the researchers discovered by using spectroscopy, the study of the interaction between matter and electromagnetic radiation.
"What we have found in the Apep system is a supernova precursor that seems to be very rapidly rotating, so fast it might be near break-up," says Dr Benjamin Pope, a co-author from New York University.
"The rapid rotation puts Apep into a whole new class. Normal supernovae are already extreme events but adding rotation to the mix can really throw gasoline on the fire."
Luckily, the star system does not appear to be in line with Earth, otherwise a strike by a gamma-ray burst from this proximity could strip ozone from the atmosphere, the researchers say.
However, they say they cannot be certain about what exactly the future has in store for the unsteady star system.
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