Tag Archives: supernova

“How Stars Shaped Our Bodies and Our Home Planet”

A portion of a nearby galaxy is illuminated in this Hubble Space Telescope image by the remnants of a once-explosive supernova. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/HEIC/Hubble Heritage Team) Nearly every component of our body and the planet we call home was created inside stars. Heavy atoms like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are produced from lighter elements like […] Continue reading

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Kepler Supernova

The image above is of Kepler’s Supernova, which Johannes Kepler is credited with discovering with his description of the stellar object in his De Stella Nova. As stars progress through their main sequence lifetime and beyond and use up more of their hydrogen in nuclear fusion, they can fuse heavier and heavier elements. More massive […] Continue reading

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What Exactly is a Supernova?

To put it simply, supernovas are explosions of stars. They are the largest explosions that occur in our universe. There are actually two ways that supernovas can occur. The first way happens at the end of a star’s lifetime. Stars are able to get their energy through nuclear fusion, which is when two atoms combineContinue reading “What Exactly is a Supernova?” Continue reading

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Putting the “Super” in Supernova

Within the past year, astronomers have made an incredible discovery about 4.5 million light years away from us. A supernova, but not just any supernova, the most powerful supernova recorded in history ever spotted by astronomers. This explosion is so powerful that astronomers did not even know that it was possible to have such aContinue reading “Putting the “Super” in Supernova” Continue reading

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Hypervelocity Stars

In 2005, the first hypervelocity star (HVS) was discovered by Smithsonian astronomers. These objects are defined as stars with very high velocities compared to normal star velocities in a galaxy. Some of them have velocities that exceed the escape velocity of the galaxy. They are thought to originate from encounters of binary stars with the … Continue reading Hypervelocity Stars Continue reading

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How Could You Be So Dense?

As a high mass star reaches the end of its life and collapses into a supernova, its protons and electrons … More Continue reading

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Personal Space

Some 13,000 light-years away, in the Camelopardalis, or giraffe, constellation lies a rather unique binary star.  Two young, massive, blue stars are orbiting each other so quickly that they make a full revolution in a mere 28 hours.  In fact, the two stars of the MY Camelopardalis system are orbiting one another so closely that […] Continue reading

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White dwarf supernovae

White dwarf supernovae only occur in a binary system, in which one of them is a white dwarf while the other can be a giant star or just a main sequence star. As far as we know, a white dwarf is the remnant of a star after the nuclear fusion inside its core has ceased,… Continue reading

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Kepler’s Supernova

In 1604 Johannes Kepler discovered a supernova explosion. Today, scientists are working to discover what caused the explosion and they are using a Digitized Sky Survey to determine it. The picture above shows colors from an X-Ray Observatory that concludes the supernova has low, intermediate and high energy. Scientists believe this explosion was caused by […] Continue reading

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Everyday is SUNday

The Sun is the single most important object in our solar system. It makes up over 99% of the mass of the solar system, exerts gravitational force over the whole […] Continue reading

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