What's A Kilonova? You're Looking At It!

Two binary neutron stars (really dense stars) start to move closer to each other;

The system sends out gravitational radiation that make ripples in space-time;

These waves make the stars move even closer together;

In the milliseconds before the explosion, the two stars "merge into a death spiral that kicks out highly radioactive material," as NASA states, with material that gets warmer, gets bigger and sends out light;

The kilonova occurs with the detonation of a white dwarf. While it's bright, 1,000 times brighter than a nova, it's only 1/10th to 1/100th the brightness of an average supernova.