supernova Archives

May 31, 2023May 31, 2023 by Brian Koberlein

There's a New Supernova in a Familiar Galaxy. You Can See it in a Small Telescope

A new supernova in M101. Credit: Craig Stocks

The Pinwheel Galaxy, also known as M101, is a spiral galaxy just 21 million light years away. It’s a popular galaxy for photographs because it’s oriented to us face-on. This means you can see the bright whorled spirals and dark cloud regions, even in amateur photographs. Since it’s relatively close and bright, you can get a good view of it, even with a small telescope. It also happens to have a supernova at the moment.

May 19, 2023May 19, 2023 by Matt Williams

The Largest Explosion Ever Seen in the Universe

Artist impression of a black hole accretion. Credit: John A. Paice.

Throughout recorded history, humans have looked up at the night sky and witnessed the major astronomical events known as a “supernova.” The name, still used by astronomers, referred to the belief that these bursts of light in the “firmament” signaled the birth of a “new star.” With the birth of telescopes and modern astronomy, we have since learned that supernovae are what occur at the end of a star’s lifecycle. At this point, when a star has exhausted its hydrogen and helium fuel, it experiences gravitational collapse at its center.

This leads to a tremendous explosion that can be seen billions of light-years distant, releasing tremendous amounts of energy and blowing the star’s outer layers off. Thanks to an international team of astronomers led by the University of Southhampton, the most powerful cosmic explosion has been confirmed! The stellar explosion, AT2021lwx, took place about 8 billion light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula and was over ten times brighter than any supernova ever observed and 100 times brighter than all the stars in the Milky Way combined!

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April 4, 2023April 4, 2023 by Scott Alan Johnston

A Stellar Explosion Mimicked the End of the Death Star

In 1997, George Lucas released the special edition remaster of his Star Wars trilogy, making changes to the special effects that both delighted and divided fans worldwide (did Han shoot first?). Among the myriad additions was a visually spectacular ring-shaped shockwave emanating from the exploding Death Star, and Alderaan too. Star Trek fans will delightedly point out that this particular special effect had previously been used in the 1991 film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, in which the Klingon moon Praxis explodes, giving the effect its name: the Praxis ring. Hollywood lore suggests Lucas was so impressed with the effect in that film that he added it to Star Wars too.

Praxis rings look cool on the silver screen, but we all know explosions in space are supposed to be spherical. With no preference for up, down, left, or right, the material blown off an exploding star should push outward in all directions.

Except when it doesn’t. A paper published at the end of March described the flattest explosion ever observed, with a disc of material ejecting out from the core along one plane, just like the Praxis effect.

March 2, 2023March 2, 2023 by Laurence Tognetti

JWST Sees the Same Supernova Three Times in an Epic Gravitational Lens

JWST image with three smaller insets displaying three lensed images comprised of a single background galaxy up close. Supernova candidate AT 2022riv (middle image with parallel lines) is the oldest image, followed by two subsequent images ~320 days after the first image (bottom) and ~1000 days after the first image (top). Neither of the two subsequent images have the supernova present. (Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Kelly)

The NASA/European Space Agency (ESA)/Canadian Space Agency (CSA) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mission continues to dazzle and amaze with every image it beams back to Earth, and a recent observation depicting not one, not two, but three images of the same galaxy has been no different, as they proudly tweeted on February 28, 2023.

December 5, 2022December 5, 2022 by Matt Williams

By Looking Back Through Hubble Data, Astronomers Have Identified six Massive Stars Before They Exploded as Core-Collapse Supernovae

The venerable Hubble Space Telescope has given us so much during the history of its service (32 years, 7 months, 6 days, and counting!) Even after all these years, the versatile and sophisticated observatory is still pulling its weight alongside more recent addition, like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and other members of NASA’s Great Observatories family. In addition to how it is still conducting observation campaigns, astronomers and astrophysicists are combing through the volumes of data Hubble accumulated over the years to find even more hidden gems.

A team led by Caltech’s recently made some very interesting finds in the Hubble archives, where they observed the sites of six supernovae to learn more about their progenitor stars. Their observations were part of the Hubble Space Telescope Snapshot program, where astronomers use HST images to chart the life cycle and evolution of stars, galaxies, and other celestial objects. From this, they were able to place constraints on the size, mass, and other key characteristics of the progenitor stars and what they experienced before experiencing core collapse.

November 7, 2022February 7, 2023 by Matt Williams

Hubble saw Multiple Light Echoes Reflecting off Rings of Dust From a Supernova Explosion

Artist view of a supernova explosion. Credit: NASA

When stars reach the end of their life cycle, they experience gravitational collapse at their centers and explode in a fiery burst (a supernova). This causes them to shed their outer layers and sends an intense burst of light and high-energy short-wavelength radiation (like X-rays and gamma-rays) out in all directions. This process also creates cosmic rays, which consist of protons and atomic nuclei that are accelerated to close to the speed of light. And on rare occasions, supernovae can also create “light echoes,” rings of light that spread out from the site of the original explosion.

These echoes will appear months to years after the supernova occurs as light from the explosion interacts with the layers of dust in the vicinity. Using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), an international team of astronomers was able to document the emergence and evolution of multiple light echoes (LEs). The team traced these echoes to a stripped-envelope supernova (SN 2016adj) located in the central dust lane of Centaurus A, a galaxy located 10 to 16 million light-years away in the constellation of Centaurus.

September 16, 2022September 16, 2022 by Laurence Tognetti

Can Astronomers Predict Which Stars Are About to Explode as Supernovae?

In a recent study submitted to High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, a team of researchers from Japan discuss strategies to observe, and possibly predict precursor signatures for an explosion from Local Type II and Galactic supernovae (SNe). This study has the potential to help us better understand both how and when supernovae could occur throughout the universe, with supernovae being the plural form of supernova (SN). But just how important is it to detect supernovae before they actually happen?

June 3, 2022May 31, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

Hubble Sees a Surviving Companion Star After its Partner Went Supernova

Artist’s impression of gamma-ray burst with orbiting binary star. Credit: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick

When stars die they’re often not alone, and for the first time astronomers have found a companion to a supernova, lingering long after its sibling destroyed itself.

May 8, 2022May 8, 2022 by Scott Alan Johnston

Even Stars Doomed to Die as Supernovae can Have Planets

90 percent of all exoplanets discovered to date (there are now more than 5000 of them) orbit around stars the same size or smaller than our sun. Giant stars seem to lack planetary companions, and this fact has serious implications for how we understand solar system formation. But is the dearth of planets around large stars a true reflection of nature, or is there some bias inherent in how we look for exoplanets that is causing us to miss them? The recent discovery of two gas giants orbiting a giant star called µ2 Scorpii suggests it might be the latter.

April 11, 2022April 11, 2022 by Evan Gough

Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A is Lopsided

Coloured image of Cassiopeia A based on data from the space telescopes Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech [via Wikimedia]

Cassiopeia A is the remnant of a supernova that exploded 11,000 light-years away. The light from the exploding star likely reached Earth around 1670 (only a couple of years before Newton invented the reflecting telescope.) But there are no records of it because the optical light didn’t reach Earth.

The Cass A nebula ripples with energy and light from the ancient explosion and is one of the most-studied objects in deep space. It’s an expanding gas shell blasted into space when its progenitor star exploded.

But Cass A isn’t expanding evenly, and astronomers think they know why.