io9: supernovas

The Stormy Heart Of The Pinwheel Galaxy

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:00:00 PST

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]

A Supernova Blossoms In A Neighboring Galaxy, And The Shockwave Is Aimed At Earth

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:11:55 PDT

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!

This new image of E0102, from the Chandra Observatory, is leading scientists to believe the supernova's "ejecta" is actually cylinder-shaped, with different "cylinders" of energy moving at different speeds — and we're just viewing it end-on. Here's an X-ray image of E0102, also from Chandra:

Bigger versions of the images are at the link. [Chandra]

The Most Efficient Particle Accelerator Known To Humanity

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:14:59 PDT

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]

Massive Explosion Culprit Revealed: A Rogue Supernova

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:30:00 PDT

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."

This composite image from the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra Observatory includes yellow ("I-band"), red (hydrogen emission) and light blue (oxygen emission) data. SN 1996cr is the bright blue flash in the lower right hand side of the image. The Circinus galaxy is frequently studied because it includes a supermassive black hole that's growing actively, and it also has "vigorous star formation." It's also pretty nearby, only about four times as far away as M31. That means researchers had plenty of telescope data on this galaxy to draw from. [Chandra]

Brightest Supernova In History Has Turned To Velvety Goodness

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:52:00 PDT

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.

[Chandra]

Listen To Pink Floyd And Watch The Lovely Aftermath Of Stellar Destruction

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:00:00 PDT

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

Someone Has Stolen Our Supernovas

Charlie Jane Anders — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:30:00 PDT

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?

So far NASA has only identified ten recent supernovas in our galaxy, including G1.9+0.3. There should be about 60 of them, going by other spiral galaxies of our type. There are still some "small, bright objects" that we could investigate, NASA scientists said. But there are two unsettling explanations for the relative scarcity of recent supernovas:

1) Either our galaxy is different than other spiral galaxies and has a lower supernova count than others. (And who knows what other anomalies this could point up?)

2) Young supernovas can look different than we were anticipating. The more young supernovas we discover in our own galaxy, the more idea we'll have about their actual diversity.

The NASA conference call was mostly civil, except for one guy who broke in on the line in a frenzy of pound-sign pressing, and then yelled: "Hi I want to talk to you guys!! I wanna talk, let's talk about your consortium with China!" The operator hurried him off the line, and then the call ended. Thinking they'd already been disconnected, one of the NASA scientists remarked: "Apart from a couple of loonies, I think that went quite well."

[Eurekalert and Chandra]

The Biggest Space Explosions Ever Recorded

charliejane — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:30:23 PST

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.

All images by AP.