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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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Kathryn Aurora Gray, aged 10, discovered a magnitude 17 supernova on New Year's Eve, in the constellation of Camelopardalis. Gray had learned a 14-year-old was the youngest to find a supernova and felt sure she could beat that. More »
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A 6-trillion-mile-wide ring of gas encircles a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, Supernova 1987A, and the explosions from the supernova are lighting it up like a candle, creating what will become a glowing ring. More »
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Check out this artist's impression of an super-violent supernova. The Very Large Telescope managed to obtain the first 3-D view of material after a star's explosion, traveling 100 million kilometers per hour. And check out a video below. More »
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This area near the core of the Pinwheel Galaxy turns out to be bursting with newborn stars, some only a few million years old. And there are about 60 supernova remnants, showing the full stellar life-cycle. [Hubble via Wired] More »
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See the blue halo around this supernova? It's blue-shifted because of the Doppler effect, which means it's heading straight for us. And the supernova E0102, in the Small Magellanic Cloud, is only 190,000 light years away. Brace for impact! More »
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Chinese astronomers observed this supernova, RCW 86, in the year 185 A.D. But it's still pumping out cosmic rays, and a new image shows how supernova remnants like this one are the Milky Way's "super-efficient particle accelerators." [Chandra Observatory] More »
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A decade after astronomers first spotted a huge, bright light source in the nearby Circinus galaxy, they've finally identified its source: a supernova, dubbed SN 1996cr. It took coordinating data from 18 different telescopes, via the Internet, to identify that nova, a milestone in the new era of "Internet astronomy." More »
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This supernova dominated our skies for weeks, a thousand years ago. It was brighter than Venus and visible during the day, and observers documented it in China, Japan, Europe and the Arab world. We now know that the brightest supernova on record, SN 1006c, was caused by a white dwarf star that gained mass from a companion star until it gorged itself and exploded. Click through for some more mind-blowing images of SN1006c, including some super-colorful X-ray images. More »
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It takes a lot of imaging power to capture the awesome aftermath of a star committing suicide. To get this freaktastic death blossom pic of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, it took three of NASA's Great Observatories, using three different light wavebands. The red is from the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared data, the yellow is visible data from the Hubble Space Telescope, and the green and blue are X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Cassiopeia went nova 11,300 years ago, but the nova itself would have been visible from Earth just 300 years ago. Image by AP/HO/NASA More »
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Here's the youngest known supernova in our galaxy, a mere 140 years old. The unassumingly named G1.9+0.3 is at least 200 years younger than the previous youngest known supernova, and it grew by 16 percent over just the last 22 years. NASA's Chandra Observatory was able to confirm North Carolina State University astrophysicist Stephen Reynolds' suspicion that this was a new supernova. But there's just one problem: NASA officials admitted in a teleconference: our galaxy is still missing about 50 supernovas. Who took them? More »
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You can still see the shock wave from the explosion of supernova Cassiopeia A in this color-enhanced image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The blue glow around the dead star is the "forward shock," material blasted with energy by the shock wave when the star blew. Click through for a gallery of the biggest space detonations ever, including a deep-space eruption that released thousands of suns' worth of energy in a few seconds. More »
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