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Right at the center of this image, there's a dim orange dot. Somewhere around that dot, one of the stars in a binary system once went supernova, creating the vast red gaseous remnant you see all around it. More »
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In theory, a supernova thousands of light-years away could release gamma-rays that would fry most life on Earth. But the star must be positioned exactly right for this to ever happen, and there's no way to prove it. Until now. More »
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There's something very wrong about pulsar SXP 1062. This neutron star was created in the aftermath of a massive supernova. All the evidence says this star formed 40,000 years ago...but its slow spinning tells a far different, much older story. More »
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NASA recently observed a cosmic explosion, and nobody knows what it was. Actually, that's not exactly true: there are actually two equally good, utterly different explanations. It was either a collision in our galaxy...or a supernova billions of light-years away. More »
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The universe simply doesn't operate on a human timescale. Events that are right about to happen in the cosmic sense could still be centuries away. But an extensive search discovered a star that really was right about to explode. More »
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If you want to see massive stars being born, look no further than the Carina Nebula, a violent star formation site that specializes in churning out big stars. But look fast...these stars could go supernova at any second, cosmically speaking. More »
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In 185 CE, Chinese astronomers reported the presence of an incredibly bright "guest star" that appeared suddenly in the sky and stayed there for months. This was the first recorded supernova...and astronomers are only now understanding what it really is. More »
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Galaxy Arp 220, located 250 million light-years from Earth, is home to seven different supernova explosions all going on at the same time. We've never seen so many stars exploding simultaneously in the same galaxy. More »
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On August 24th, an international team of astronomers discovered what they referred to as "an instant cosmic classic" — the brightest, closest, and youngest supernova we've detected in decades. In fact, the supernova, dubbed PTF11kly, has now reached peak brightness, making it bright enough to spy with a pair of binoculars. More »
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Like first person shooters? Spent too many nights playing Halo, lining up another player between the cross-hairs for a headshot while sniping from the safety of a building across the map? That same, precious skill set can be used to help researchers when you join the Hunt for Supernovae.

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The whole point of white dwarfs is that they're the remains of stars not big enough to go supernova. Or so we thought. Many of these stars are held together by their super-fast spins... and slowing down could mean an explosion. More »
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Astronomers are calling a supernova first sighted just two days ago an "Instant Cosmic Classic." Not only is the supernova brighter and closer to Earth (around 21 million light-years) than any we've observed in a generation, scientists actually managed to catch the supernova within hours of its explosion, making it the youngest supernova we've ever detected. More »
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Although every supernova has some things in common — a big boom, for example — there are plenty of different types. And different reasons why a star might go nova. More »
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This amazing image reveals the Great Carina Nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our galaxy. But it isn't just new stars that are being born in the nebula, as old stars are also dying in spectacular supernovas. More »
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A new class of supernova has been discovered, with six examples of it seen so far. Powered by a mysterious source, they're brighter and longer-lived than the novae we know now. More »
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This video is a musical record of over three years worth of Type Ia supernova bursts, which are caused when white dwarf stars explode. University of Victoria astronomer Alex Parker and UC Santa Barbara's Melissa Graham assigned each blast an instrument and musical note depending on its properties. The result is the "Supernova Sonata." More »
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White dwarfs are the ultra-dense husks of stars like our own, dying remnants that are just a pale shadow of their former glory. But when two white dwarfs come together, they can create something very special: a brand new star. More »
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Scientists have come up with a new theory about how ultra-light black holes could be formed, and it's an entirely new way of looking at the phenomenon. Some black holes might be formed from the outside in, not the inside out. More »
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Scientists have noticed that the bigger explosions out come from the smaller galaxies. If star size were purely random, bigger galaxies with more stars would have larger explosions. Find out why small galaxies produce massive booms. More »
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In 1660, Britain restored the monarchy after a decade of Oliver Cromwell's puritanical dictatorship. Charles II's supporters pointed out that his birth was marked by a glorious noon-day star, proving his divine right to rule...and that wasn't necessarily just propaganda. More »
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Hubble telescope has captured this incredible, highly-detailed shot of the Tarantula Nebula, which is an enormous, many-legged cloud of dust created by multiple supernovae - one of which was visible from Earth back in the 17th century. Many new, hot stars burn in the heart of the nebula, ionizing its gas and giving it that lurid red glow. The nebula is so bright that it's visible with the naked eye on clear nights here on Earth, 170,000 light years away.Click here to see the embiggened image!According to a release from NASA about the photo:

The part of the nebula visible in this image from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys is criss-crossed with tendrils of dust and gas churned up by recent supernovae. These supernova remnants include NGC 2060, visible above and to the left of the centre of this image, which contains the brightest known pulsar . . . Near the edge of the nebula, outside the frame, below and to the right, lie the remains of supernova SN 1987a, the closest supernova to Earth to be observed since the invention of telescopes in the 17th century. Hubble and other telescopes have been returning to spy on this stellar explosion regularly since it blew up in 1987, and each subsequent visit shows an expanding shockwave lighting up the gas around the star, creating a pearl necklace of glowing pockets of gas around the remains of the star. Find out more about the extraordinary volume of space where the Tarantula nebula resides, with neighbors that include the heaviest known star and ultra-bright star clusters, via ESA/HubbleImage via NASA/ESA More »
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The universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, and we don't know why. Dark energy is needed to explain this, but what is this strange phenomenon? We don't know, but NASA has conclusively ruled out an alternative to dark energy. More »
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This delicate red bubble of gas floats in a small galaxy about 160,000 light years from Earth. Its the result of an extraordinary supernova, caused by a binary star system where one star consumes the other - then explodes. More »
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NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has picked up what appears to be the youngest black hole we've discovered near our planet. This object could however instead be the youngest documented neutron star. Either way, it's an exciting find. More »
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You haven't crossed the final frontier until you've had sex in space. It's the ultimate dream: weightless lovemaking. Here are 11 awesome zero-gravity sex scenes...plus one real-life zero G sexytime moment caught on video. More »
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A giant star recently went supernova in a distant galaxy. Except you'd never know it, because the star emitted giant dust clouds that trapped and squelched the explosion. I don't believe stars can feel embarrassment...but yeah, that's pretty embarrassing. More »
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The Orgueil meteorite crashed into France 150 years ago. It's over 4.5 billion years old...and it might carry a piece of an ancient supernova that was instrumental to the solar system's birth. More »
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An ancient meteorite reveals the solar system is 4.5682 billion years old, 1.9 million years older than we thought. The difference seems insignificant, but it could mean our solar system was actually born in the blast furnace of a supernova. More »
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A basic property of Earth's organic molecules could be caused by supernova explosions. That means massive stellar explosions indirectly governed the building blocks of life on Earth...and could be doing it elsewhere in the cosmos. More »
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160,000 light years away, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, an object is being expelled from the remnant of a supernova at 500 million miles an hour. And NASA got this shot of it. More »
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Currently there are two known causes for supernovae. But an exploding star spotted in 2005 defies the understood explanations. The theory of how it ignited could explain something unexpected: Why we have calcium in our bones. More »
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A white dwarf 3,260 light-years from Earth - mere walking distance in cosmic terms - looks like it could go supernova. And that stellar explosion would have dire consequences for our planet, not to mention our possible descendants. More »
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In the galaxy M82 (pictured), a mere 12 million light years from Earth, an enormous but invisible supernova has disturbed its local volume with massive shockwaves. The supernova, the closest to Earth in the past five years, can only be detected via radio waves. More »
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We're all hoping if Star Trek is a blockbuster, it'll bring space opera back to our screens. But space opera hasn't always hit the high notes. Here are some examples of space opera done wrong. More »
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It's not just celebrities and beloved pets that pass before their time, apparently. Images from the Hubble Space Telescope have captured a star going supernova almost a million years before it should have. More »
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Researchers at Princeton University got one hell of a treat this past January when a star exploded in the galaxy NGC2770. It's a 100 million light years from Earth, but it marks the first time astronomers have gotten the chance to watch a star explode 'live' from start to finish (well the explosion happened 100 million years ago, but you know what we mean). Witnessing the event caused the lead author to utter the best quote we've ever seen from an astronomer. More »
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2000's Supernova was a confusing mess with like 27 directors, but I love its method of faster-than-light travel. For one thing, you have to be totally naked in order to be protected within the bio-protection units. (And even then, your face might melt, like this ship's captain's.) For another, you see trippy-ass visions during the hyperspace jump, while cool crackly zaps bathe the ship. Another point in this scene's favor: James Spader bulked up to play the movie's action hero. Click through for a clip of Spader sharing a bio-protection unit with Angela Bassett (which may not be work-safe.) More »
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A star 150 times larger than our own sun detonated in the biggest supernova ever recorded, as shown in this NASA illustration from May. This appears to be a new type of supernova, one which obliterates a massive star instead of creating a black hole. Photo by M. Weiss/NASA/CXC via Getty Images More »
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