stellar explosion tagged posts

Astronomers discover Micronovae, a new kind of Stellar Explosion

This artist’s impression shows a two-star system where micronovae may occur. The blue disc swirling around the bright white dwarf in the centre of the image is made up of material, mostly hydrogen, stolen from its companion star. Towards the centre of the disc, the white dwarf uses its strong magnetic fields to funnel the hydrogen towards its poles. As the material falls on the hot surface of the star, it triggers a micronova explosion, contained by the magnetic fields at one of the white dwarf’s poles.

A team of astronomers, with the help of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), have observed a new type of stellar explosion — a micronova. These outbursts happen on the surface of certain stars, and can each burn through around 3...

Read More

Cosmic Flashes come in all Different Sizes

Fast radio bursts from magnetar SGR 1935+2154 (illustration)
On May 24, four European telescopes took part in the global effort to understand mysterious cosmic flashes. The telescopes captured flashes of radio waves from an extreme, magnetised star in our galaxy. All are shown in this illustration. â€‹â€‹â€‹â€‹â€‹ â€‹Danielle Futselaar, artsource.nl

By studying the site of a spectacular stellar explosion seen in April 2020, a Chalmers-led team of scientists have used four European radio telescopes to confirm that astronomy’s most exciting puzzle is about to be solved. Fast radio bursts, unpredictable millisecond-long radio signals seen at huge distances across the universe, are generated by extreme stars called magnetars — and are astonishingly diverse in brightness.

For over a decade, the phenomenon known as fast radio bursts has excited and...

Read More

What a Dying Star’s Ashes tell us about the Birth of our Solar System

Billions of years ago, before our solar system was born, a dead star known as a white dwarf in a nearby binary star system accumulated enough material from its companion to cause it to ‘go nova.’ The stellar explosion forged dust grains with exotic compositions not found in our solar system. A team of researchers led by the UA found such a grain (inset image), encased in a meteorite, that survived the formation of our solar system and analyzed it with instruments sensitive enough to ID single atoms in a sample. Measuring one 25,000th of an inch, the carbon-rich graphite grain (red) revealed an embedded speck of oxygen-rich material (blue), two types of stardust that were thought could not form in the same nova eruption.
Credit: University of Arizona/Heather Roper

Researchers discovere...

Read More

Astronomers witness Birth of New Star from Stellar Explosion

Unlike most stellar explosions that fade away, supernova SN 2012au continues to shine today thanks to a powerful new pulsar. Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. DePasquale (STScI)

Unlike most stellar explosions that fade away, supernova SN 2012au continues to shine today thanks to a powerful new pulsar.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. DePasquale (STScI)

The explosions of stars, known as supernovae, can be so bright they outshine their host galaxies. They take months or years to fade away, and sometimes, the gaseous remains of the explosion slam into hydrogen-rich gas and temporarily get bright again – but could they remain luminous without any outside interference?

That’s what Dan Milisavljevic, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Purdue University, believes he saw six years after “SN 2012au” exploded...

Read More