We all know what happens to most stars at the end of their lives. They explode in a violent event known as a supernova when they exhaust their fuel and essentially collapse in on themselves. This leads to some of the most powerful explosions in the universe and marks the end of a star’s life. …
NASA and the ESA have released a timelapse clip of images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope showing a supernova slowly dying far away. The supernova took roughly a year in Earth time to go from incredibly bright to dull and dim. Whatever was orbiting the star when it detonated is probably not there anymore. …
NASA’s Hubble telescope spotted a wispy orange ribbon in space, but it’s actually the destructive blast wave of a supernova. The supernova is located in the Cygnus constellation and is roughly 2,400 light-years from Earth. Hubble has now spent over three decades imaging the cosmos and shows no signs of slowing down. NASA’s Hubble Space …
A long-dead star is still producing a spectacular supernova, and the blast is moving at incredible speeds. Some areas of the supernova blast are moving at speeds of up to 23 million miles per hour. The explosion happened some 20,000 light-years from Earth. We know that stars have finite lifespans. Some of them just sort …
For a couple of months now, the nearby star known as Betelgeuse has been acting rather strange. At first, the star appeared to be getting very dim, hinting at the possibility that the Red Giant may soon collapse and explode into a supernova. Not everyone believed the star was nearing its final act, but its …
One of the more interesting astronomy stories that came out at the tail end of 2019 was the bizarre behavior of the nearby star known as Betelgeuse. It sits somewhere between 520 and 650 light-years from Earth, and that’s extremely close in the grand scheme of things, making its behavior of particular interest to us …
Our Sun is the reason we’re all here today. Some day it’ll go boom, but we’ll all (hopefully) be long gone, one way or another, by the time that happens. In the meantime, however, astronomers can observe the changes happening to distant stars, some of which may offer clues as to how our own star …
Earth has managed to avoid any truly catastrophic impacts from objects in space for quite some time, but that doesn’t mean material from the cosmos doesn’t regularly rain down on our world. Scientists regularly observe rocks of varying sizes streaking through Earth’s atmosphere. Most of the time, the material that makes its way to the …
Scientists have a pretty good handle on the life cycle of various stars. They know the types of stars that are likely to die in fiery supernova blasts, and they know that not all supernova are created equal. Still, space has many untold secrets, and a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal reveals that …
NASA’s TESS (which stands for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) is built to spot undetected planets orbiting distant stars. I mean, it’s right there in the name, so you can imagine it’s a rather specialized piece of equipment. That being said, the spacecraft is apparently also adept at spotting stars in the midst of blowing their …
