type Ia supernova – Astronomy Now

Hubble spots expanding light echo around supernova

10 November 2017 Astronomy Now

Light from a supernova explosion in the nearby starburst galaxy M82 is reverberating off a huge dust cloud in interstellar space.

Keck Observatory captures rare high-resolution images of exploded star

26 April 2017 Astronomy Now

Scientists will now be able to measure how fast the universe is truly expanding with the kind of precision not possible before. This, after an international team of astronomers led by Stockholm University, Sweden, captured four distinct images of a gravitationally lensed Type Ia supernova, named iPTF16geu.

Hubble views supernova shrapnel

15 August 2016 Astronomy Now

Several thousand years ago, a star some 160,000 light-years away from us exploded, scattering stellar shrapnel across the sky. The aftermath of this Type Ia supernova is shown here in this striking image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The exploding star was a white dwarf located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a close neighbouring galaxy.

Hubble sees the shredded remains of a supernova

25 July 2016 Astronomy Now

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures the remnants of a long-dead star. These rippling wisps of ionised gas, named DEM L316A, are the remains of an especially energetic Type Ia supernova located some 160,000 light-years away within one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbours — the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).

Trigger for Milky Way’s youngest supernova identified

31 March 2016 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have used data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the VLA to determine the likely trigger for the most recent supernova in the Milky Way. They applied a new technique that could have implications for understanding other Type Ia supernovae, a class of stellar explosions that scientists use to determine the expansion rate of the universe.

First discovery of a binary companion for a Type Ia supernova

23 March 2016 Astronomy Now

A team of astronomers has detected a flash of light from the companion star to supernova 2012cg that lies in the edge-on spiral NGC 4424, 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. This is the first time that the impact of an exploding star on its neighbour has been witnessed.

Exiled stars explode far from home

5 June 2015 Astronomy Now

Hubble Space Telescope images confirm that three supernovae discovered several years ago exploded in the dark emptiness of intergalactic space — their nearest neighbours probably 300 light-years away — having been flung from their home galaxies millions or billions of years earlier.

Thermonuclear supernova ejects Galaxy’s fastest star

7 March 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers using the 10-metre Keck II and Pan-STARRS1 telescopes on Hawaii have discovered a Milky Way star travelling at a record 2.7 million miles per hour. Propelled by the thermonuclear detonation of a massive white dwarf companion, this hypervelocity star will escape the gravity of our Galaxy.