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#SupernovaSunday

Supernovae are stellar explosions that are so powerful they briefly outshine entire galaxies, radiating as much energy as the Sun or any ordinary star is expected to emit over its entire life span

The Universe is so vast that it is estimated that a star explodes every second. In a galaxy the size of our Milky Way, a star will go supernova every 50 years on average.

A star can go supernova in one of two ways: 

Type I supernova: star accumulates matter from a nearby neighbor until a runaway nuclear reaction ignites. 

Type II supernova: star runs out of nuclear fuel and collapses under its own gravity.

Supernovae play a key role in distributing elements throughout the universe. When the star explodes, it shoots elements and debris into space. Many of the elements we find here on Earth, including life, are made in the core of stars. These elements travel on to form new stars, planets and everything else in the universe.

The Pelican Nebula - IC 5070

The Pelican Nebula is located in the constellation Cygnus and is filled with heating gas and new stars. This nebula is a popular target for astronomers because it has an intense mix of evolving gasses and stars. As stars form within gas clouds they heat the surrounding gas and cause it to emit light at various wavelengths. This processes is not entirely uncommon and puts the Pelican Nebula into a classification of nebulae known as emission nebulae. 

Markarian 177 is a dwarf galaxy located more than 90 million light-years away, in the bowl of the Big Dipper, within the constellation Ursa Major. It’s a galaxy that seems to show possible signs of a recent galactic collision. Near the galaxy, at over 2,600 light-years from it, a strange X-ray source known as SDSS1133 — as shown in the Keck Telescope image above, is in orbit around Markarian 177. The source may be a supermassive black hole ejected from its home galaxy after merging with Markarian 177. If the object isn’t a black hole, then it might have been a rare type of star known as a Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) that has recently undergone a supernova.

For more information:

A jettisoned black hole

SDSS1133: An Unusually Persistent Transient in a Nearby Dwarf Galaxy

Spotting black holes is tricky. Because they don’t give off light, astronomers have a difficult time pinpointing their location. But when a black hole gets close enough to an object, like a star, for example, and begins consuming the object’s mass, the matter that pours into its gravitational clutches can get so hot that it glows and releases energy in the form of X-ray light. The most powerful X-rays are emitted from the hottest material swirling just outside the edge of the black hole. By observing this light with space telescopes, scientists can determine where black holes are hiding in the cosmos. Watch the video to see a black hole in action.

Mouth of the Beast CG4 glows menacingly 1,300 light years from Earth in this image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope. CG4 is a sub-type of nebula known as a Bok globule — a very compact, very dense, very cold nebula — the smallest type of dark nebula, only a light-year or two across. Inside that region is a mass that can roughly vary between 2 and 100 times the mass of our sun. 

Sunny with a Chance of Wild Space Weather

Solar eruptions showing a blend of 304 and 171 Ångström light imaged by the Solar Dynamics Observatory's AIA instrument.

Spiral Galaxy M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy

The Pinwheel Galaxy is located in the constellation Ursa Major (a portion of which is known commonly as the big dipper) at a distance of 21 million light-years from Earth. Before Hubble’s pan of the Andromeda Galaxy, this was the most detail image of a galaxy ever taken. The galaxy’s portrait is actually composed of 51 individual Hubble exposures, in addition to elements from images from ground-based photos. Individual stars can be seen in this image as well as other galaxies which appear to be within M101 but are really behind it. This Galaxy is massive, its diameter is 170,000 light-years across and it is seventy percent larger than our Milky Way Galaxy. It has a disk mass on the order of 100 billion solar masses, along with a small central bulge of about 3 billion solar masses. On a very dark night (away from light pollution) this galaxy is visible to the naked eye just above the “handle” of what most call the big dipper.

Crystals of sublimed 2-(trifluoroacetyl)pyrrole.

The raw reaction product what was an off-white crystalline compound with a melting point 50 °C was loaded in a test tube and left there for a few months. For now, these crystals formed at the wall what are perfectly pure 2-(trifluoroacetyl)pyrrole.

Ancient planets are almost as old as the universe

By Lisa Grossman

The Old Ones were already ancient when the Earth was born. Five small planets orbit an 11.2 billion-year-old star, making them about 80 per cent as old as the universe itself. That means our galaxy started building rocky planets earlier than we thought.

"Now that we know that these planets can be twice as old as Earth, this opens the possibility for the existence of ancient life in the galaxy," says Tiago Campante at the University of Birmingham in the UK.

NASA’s Kepler space telescope spotted the planets around an orange dwarf star called Kepler 444, which is 117 light years away and about 25 per cent smaller than the sun.

"The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs." – Cicero

Hidden Galaxy IC 342 Revealed IC 342 is a gorgeous galaxy located 10 million light-years away but one that is hard to observe. It is hidden from clear view by the stars, gas and dust clouds along the galactic equator of our own Milky Way galaxy. (This is why you see so many stars in the foreground.)

Without these obstructions, IC 342 would actually be one of the brightest galaxies in our night sky. Even though IC 342’s light is dimmed by intervening cosmic clouds, a sensitive telescope along with dark skies is able to reveal its spiral arms and glowing galactic core.

The arch of our Milky Way’s central disk hovers over Arches National Park in Utah, USA. A dim glow created by light pollution from Moab, Utah can also be seen in the distance.