Tag: supernova

This image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the location of different elements in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant including silicon (red), sulfur (yellow), calcium (green) and iron (purple), as well as the overlay of all such elements (top). A supernova remnant expels heavy eleme...

The birth of a black hole is a dramatic event rooted in the life cycle of a massive star. When such a star depletes its nuclear fuel, it no longer has the energy to counteract the force of its own gravity. The core of the star collapses under this immense gravitational force. For stars with a signif...

Not since 1604 have human eyes witnessed a supernova directly. In 1604, the last naked-eye supernova to occur in the Milky Way galaxy happened, known today as Kepler’s supernova. Although the supernova faded from naked-eye view by 1605, its remnant remains visible today, as sh...

One of the biggest problems facing modern astronomers, astrophysicists, and cosmologists — every scientist who studies the Universe itself for a living — is that we do not understand how quickly the Universe is expanding. The most direct method of measuring the expansion rate, by lo...

An enormous supernova spotted by the Gaia satellite may be the most massive ever seen by astronomers. This tremendous eruption, a billion light years from Earth, could rewrite what we know about the deaths of the largest stars in the Universe. The star, called SN2016iet, erupted before plant or a...

Not since 1604 have human eyes witnessed a supernova directly. In 1604, the last naked-eye supernova to occur in the Milky Way galaxy happened, known today as Kepler’s supernova. Although the supernova faded from naked-eye view by 1605, its remnant remains visible today, as sh...

One potential solution could lie in directly measuring larger numbers of objects whose intrinsic properties are known — so-called “standard candles” like type Ia supernovae — at ever-greater distances. A huge challenge to this has been that supernovae are rare, infrequent, an...