supernova tagged posts

Stars like the sun are remarkably constant. They vary in brightness by only 0.1% over years and decades, thanks to the fusion of hydrogen into helium that powers them. This process will keep the sun shining steadily for about 5 billion more years, but when stars exhaust their nuclear fuel, their deaths can lead to pyrotechnics.

The sun will eventually die by growing large and then condensing into a type of star called a white dwarf. But stars more than eight times more massive than the sun die violently in an explosion called a supernova.

Supernovae happen across the Milky Way only a few times a century, and these violent explosions are usually remote enough that people here on Earth don’t n...

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A very rare, strange burst of extraordinarily bright light in the universe just got even stranger—thanks to the eagle-eye of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The phenomenon, called a Luminous Fast Blue Optical Transient (LFBOT), flashed onto the scene where it wasn't expected to be found, far away from any host galaxy. Only Hubble could pinpoint its location. The Hubble results suggest astronomers know even less about these objects than previously thought by ruling out some possible theories.Read More

A newly discovered nearby supernova whose star ejected up to a full solar mass of material in the year prior to its explosion is challenging the standard theory of stellar evolution. The new observations are giving astronomers insight into what happens in the final year prior to a star’s death and explosion.

SN 2023ixf is a new Type II supernova discovered in May 2023 by amateur astronomer Kōichi Itagaki of Yamagata, Japan shortly after its progenitor, or origin star, exploded. Located about 20 million light-years away in the Pinwheel Galaxy, SN 2023ixf’s proximity to Earth, the supernova’s extreme brightness, and its young age make it a treasure trove of observable data for scientists studying the death of massive stars in supernova explosions.

Type II...

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A team of astronomers led by the University of Southampton have uncovered the largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed.

The explosion is more than ten times brighter than any known supernova (exploding star) and three times brighter than the brightest tidal disruption event, where a star falls into a supermassive black hole.

The explosion, known as AT2021lwx, has currently lasted over three years, compared to most supernovae which are only visibly bright for a few months. It took place nearly 8 billion light years away, when the universe was around 6 billion years old, and is still being detected by a network of telescopes.

The researchers believe that the explosion is a result of a vast cloud of gas, possibly th...

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