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Supernova

A supernova (plural supernovae) is a stellar explosion which produces an extremely bright object made of plasma that declines to invisibility over weeks or months.

Note: The above text is excerpted from the Wikipedia article "Supernova", which has been released under the GNU Free Documentation License.

For more information, see the following related content on ScienceDaily:

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Radio Signal Reveals Supernova Origin

May 17, 2023 — Astronomers reveal the origin of a thermonuclear supernova explosion. Strong emission lines of helium and the first detection of such a supernova in radio waves show that the exploding white dwarf ...

Hyperfast White Dwarf Stars Provide Clues for Understanding Supernovae

May 13, 2022 — Scientists have used computer modeling to show how a hypothesized type of supernova would evolve on the scale of thousands of years, giving researchers a way to look for examples of supernovae of ...

A Supernova in Distant Space Allows Us to Understand the Origin of the Elements in the Universe

Nov. 10, 2022 — A supernova is a stellar explosion, which occurs when the lives of some really massive stars come to an end. In this violent epilogue, the star expels the material from its outer layers by means of a ...

Resurrected Supernova Provides Missing Link

Mar. 2, 2023 — Astronomers have discovered a supernova exhibiting unprecedented rebrightening at millimeter wavelengths, providing an intermediate case between two types of supernovae: those of solitary stars and ...

Astronomers Spotted Unusual Stellar Explosion Rich in Oxygen and Magnesium

Jan. 10, 2023 — Astronomers have discovered a supernova explosion that expands our understanding of the later life stages of massive ...

'Oddball Supernova' Appears Strangely Cool Before Exploding

May 5, 2021 — Astronomers examined a massive star two-and-a-half years before it exploded into a supernova. At the end of their lives, cool, yellow stars are typically shrouded in hydrogen, which conceals the ...

Webb Reveals New Structures Within Iconic Supernova

Aug. 31, 2023 — NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has begun the study of one of the most renowned supernovae, SN 1987A (Supernova 1987A). Located 168,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, SN 1987A ...

Rare Blast's Remains Discovered in Milky Way's Center

Feb. 8, 2021 — Astronomers may have found our Galaxy's first example of an unusual kind of stellar explosion. This discovery adds to the understanding of how some stars shatter and seed the universe with ...

Astronomers Solve 900-Year-Old Cosmic Mystery Surrounding Chinese Supernova of 1181AD

Sep. 15, 2021 — A 900-year-old cosmic mystery surrounding the origins of a famous supernova first spotted over China in 1181AD has finally been solved, according to an international team of astronomers. New research ...

Hubble Captures Three Faces of Evolving Supernova in Early Universe

Nov. 10, 2022 — Three different moments in a far-off supernova explosion were captured in a single snapshot by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The star exploded more than 11 billion years ago, when the universe ...

Space & Time News

December 8, 2023

Ancient Stars Made Extraordinarily Heavy Elements

Dec. 7, 2023 — How heavy can an element be? An international team of researchers has found that ancient stars were capable of producing elements with atomic masses greater than 260, heavier than any element on the periodic table found naturally on Earth. The ...

An Astronomical Waltz Reveals a Sextuplet of Planets

Nov. 29, 2023 — Astronomers have found a key new system of six transiting planets orbiting a bright star in a harmonic rhythm. This rare property enabled the team to determine the planetary orbits which initially appeared as an unsolvable ...

Astronomers Discover Disc Around Star in Another Galaxy

Nov. 29, 2023 — In a remarkable discovery, astronomers have found a disc around a young star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy neighboring ours. It's the first time such a disc, identical to those forming planets in our own Milky Way, has ever been found ...

Telescope Array Detects Second Highest-Energy Cosmic Ray Ever

Nov. 23, 2023 — In 1991, an experiment detected the highest-energy cosmic ray ever observed. Later dubbed the Oh-My-God particle, the cosmic ray’s energy shocked astrophysicists. Nothing in our galaxy had the power to produce it, and the particle had more energy ...

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Scholars Say It's Time to Declare a New Epoch on the Moon, the 'Lunar Anthropocene'

Dec. 8, 2023 — According to anthropologists and geologists, it's time to acknowledge humans have become the dominant force shaping the moon's environment by ...

Giant Doubts About Giant Exomoons

Dec. 7, 2023 — The extrasolar planets Kepler-1625b and Kepler-1708b are supposedly the home worlds of the first known exomoons. A new study now comes to a different ...

Stellar Winds Regulate Growth of Galaxies

Dec. 6, 2023 — Galactic winds enable the exchange of matter between galaxies and their surroundings. In this way, they limit the growth of galaxies, that is, their star formation rate. Although this had already ...

Interpreting the Afterglow of a Black Hole's Breakfast

Dec. 4, 2023 — An entirely new way to probe how active black holes behave when they eat has been discovered by an international team of ...

Limitations of Asteroid Crater Lakes as Climate Archives

Dec. 5, 2023 — In southern Germany just north of the Danube, there lies a large circular depression between the hilly surroundings: the Nördlinger Ries. Almost 15 million years ago, an asteroid struck this spot. ...

Unlocking Neutron Star Rotation Anomalies: Insights from Quantum Simulation

Dec. 5, 2023 — A collaboration between quantum physicists and astrophysicists has achieved a significant breakthrough in understanding neutron star glitches. They were able to numerically simulate this enigmatic ...

Astronomers Determine the Age of Three Mysterious Baby Stars at the Heart of the Milky Way

Dec. 5, 2023 — Through analysis of high-resolution data from a ten-meter telescope in Hawaii, researchers have succeeded in generating new knowledge about three ...

Can Signs of Life Be Detected from Saturn's Frigid Moon?

Dec. 5, 2023 — Researchers have shown unambiguous laboratory evidence that amino acids transported in the ice plumes of Saturn's moon, Eceladus, can survive impact speeds of up to 4.2 km/s, supporting their ...

Tracking Undetectable Space Junk

Dec. 4, 2023 — Satellite and spacecraft operators may finally be able to detect small pieces of debris orbiting Earth using a new approach. Colliding pieces of space debris emit electric signals that could help ...

Ghostlike Dusty Galaxy Reappears in James Webb Space Telescope Image

Dec. 1, 2023 — Astronomers studying images from the James Webb Space Telescope have identified an object as a 'dusty star-forming galaxy' from nearly 1 billion years after the Big Bang. They have also discovered ...