Supernovae
The Brightest Gamma Ray Burst Ever Seen Came from a Collapsing Star
After a journey lasting about two billion years, photons from an extremely energetic gamma-ray burst (GRB) struck the sensors on…
The Large Magellanic Cloud isn’t Very Metal
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is the Milky Way's most massive satellite galaxy. Because it's so easily observed, astronomers have…
Astronomers Catch a Supernova Explode Almost in Realtime
Catching a supernova in action is tricky business. There is no way to predict them, and they don’t occur very…
Even if We Can’t See the First Stars, We Could Detect Their Impact on the First Galaxies
For a long time, our understanding of the Universe's first galaxies leaned heavily on theory. The light from that age…
This Galaxy Hosted One of the Most Powerful Supernovae Ever Seen
In 2010, an exceptionally luminous supernova exploded in a small galaxy about 150 million light-years away called UGC 5189A. The…
Webb Sees a Supernova Go Off in a Gravitationally Lensed Galaxy – for the Second Time
Nature, in its infinite inventiveness, provides natural astronomical lenses that allow us to see objects beyond the normal reach of…
The Second Most Energetic Cosmic Ray Ever Found
"Oh My God," someone must have said in 1991 when researchers detected the most energetic cosmic ray ever to strike…
An Amateur Astronomer Discovered One-of-a-Kind Supernova Remnant
In 2013, amateur astronomer Dana Patchick was looking through images from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer archive and discovered a…
This Dark Nebula Hides an Enormous Star
The birth of a star is a spectacular event that plays out behind a veil of gas and dust. It's…
A Machine Learning Algorithm Finds its First Supernova
Plenty of recent mainstream news articles have touted AI's ability to assist in the process of scientific discovery. But most…