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Supernova

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RTH10260
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Supernova

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Champagne moment as supernova captured in detail for the first time
Researchers record the earliest moments of a supernova as a shockwave blasts its way through a star

Donna Lu
Thu 5 Aug 2021 18.30 BST

The earliest moments of a supernova – the cataclysmic explosion of a massive star – have been observed in unprecedented detail, in a development researchers say could help us better understand what happens to stars when they die.

Using data collected from Nasa’s Kepler space telescope in 2017, astrophysicists recorded the initial light burst from a supernova as a shockwave blasted its way through a star.

In a study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, scientists suggested the star that exploded was likely a yellow supergiant, which is more than 100 times bigger than our sun.

Patrick Armstrong, a PhD student at the Australian National University and the study’s first author, said the earliest phase of a supernova had not ever been fully observed before.

“In order to capture this, you have to be looking at the right part of the sky, at the right time, with the right amount of detail, to be able to see everything,” he said.

Armstrong said the supernova, called SN2017jgh, was more than one billion light years away from Earth. “The light we were seeing had actually left that star a billion years ago.”



https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... first-time
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Re: Supernova

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Cool. :shock:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: Supernova

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:yeahthat:
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Re: Supernova

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Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/20 ... -supernova

Hubble Reveals Surviving Companion Star in Aftermath of Supernova

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a witness at the scene of a star's explosive death: a companion star previously hidden in the glare of its partner's supernova. The discovery is a first for a particular type of supernova – one in which the star was stripped of its entire outer gas envelope before exploding.

The finding provides crucial insight into the binary nature of massive stars, as well as the potential prequel to the ultimate merger of the companion stars that would rattle across the universe as gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime itself.

Astronomers detect the signature of various elements in supernova explosions. These elements are layered like an onion pre-supernova. Hydrogen is found in the outermost layer of a star, and if no hydrogen is detected in the aftermath of the supernova, that means it was stripped away before the explosion occurred.

The cause of the hydrogen loss had been a mystery, and astronomers have been using Hubble to search for clues and test theories to explain these stripped supernovae. The new Hubble observations provide the best evidence yet to support the theory that an unseen companion star siphons off the gas envelope from its partner star before it explodes.

"This was the moment we had been waiting for, finally seeing the evidence for a binary system progenitor of a fully stripped supernova," said astronomer Ori Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, lead investigator on the Hubble research program. "The goal is to move this area of study from theory to working with data and seeing what these systems really look like."
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