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The galactic supernova remnant G261.9+5.5. (Wasim Raja/CSIRO; Pascal Elah/Pawsey) Within 24 hours of accessing the first stage of Australia's newest supercomputing system, researchers have processed a series of radio telescope observations, including a highly detailed image of a supernova remnant. The very high data rates and the enormous data volumes from new-generation radio telescopes such as ASKAP (Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder) need highly capable software running on supercomputers. This is where the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre comes into play, with a newly launched supercomputer called Setonix – named after Western Australia's favorite animal, the quokka (Setonix brachyurus). ASKAP, which...

Explanation: The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, expanding debris from massive star's death explosion, witnessed on planet Earth in 1054 AD. This brave new image offers a 21st century view of the Crab Nebula by presenting image data from across the electromagnetic spectrum as wavelengths of visible light. From space, Chandra (X-ray) XMM-Newton (ultraviolet), Hubble (visible), and Spitzer (infrared), data are in purple, blue, green, and yellow hues. From the ground, Very Large...

"Using two Hawaiʻi telescopes—the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy Pan-STARRS on Haleakalā, Maui and W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island—a team of researchers conducting the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE) transient survey observed the red supergiant during its last 130 days leading up to its deadly detonation."

Source:   University Of Missouri-Rolla (http://www.umr.edu) Date:   Posted 7/17/2002 The Sun: A Great Ball Of Iron? For years, scientists have assumed that the sun is an enormous mass of hydrogen. But in a paper presented before the American Astronomical Society, Dr. Oliver Manuel, a professor of nuclear chemistry at UMR, says iron, not hydrogen, is the sun's most abundant element. Manuel claims that hydrogen fusion creates some of the sun's heat, as hydrogen -- the lightest of all elements -- moves to the sun's surface. But most of the heat comes from the core of an exploded supernova...

Explanation: We've seen this same supernova three times -- when will we see it a fourth? When a distant star explodes in a supernova, we're lucky if we see it even once. In the case of AT 2016jka ("SN Requiem"), because the exploding star happened to be lined up behind the center of a galaxy cluster (MACS J0138 in this case), a comparison of Hubble Space Telescope images demonstrate that we saw it three times. These three supernova images are highlighted in circles near the bottom of the left frame taken in 2016. On the right frame, taken in 2019,...

For the first time, physicists have been able to directly measure one of the ways exploding stars forge the heaviest elements in the Universe. By probing an accelerated beam of radioactive ions, a team led by physicist Gavin Lotay of the University of Surrey in the UK observed the proton-capture process thought to occur in core-collapse supernovae. Not only have scientists now seen how this happens in detail, the measurements are allowing us to better understand the production and abundances of mysterious isotopes called p-nuclei. On the most basic level, stars can be thought of as the element factories of...

In the year 1181 AD, a new bright point of light as luminous as the planet Saturn appeared to Chinese and Japanese skygazers for a little more than six months before disappearing. Hundreds of years later, researchers believe they have finally found the source of this mysterious appearance. The event, like the famous Crab Nebula-forming stellar explosion of 1054, is one of just a handful of bright nearby flashes noted in historical records, but unlike the Crab Nebula, the 1181 spectacle was tricky to pin down. The historical record leaves a few clues that have been useful to modern astronomers....

Fast-moving debris from a supernova explosion triggered by a stellar collision crashes into gas thrown out earlier, and the shocks cause bright radio emission seen by the VLA. Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF __________________________________________________________________________ Astronomers have found dramatic evidence that a black hole or neutron star spiraled its way into the core of a companion star and caused that companion to explode as a supernova. The astronomers were tipped off by data from the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS), a multi-year project using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). “Theorists had predicted that this could...

“Seeding the Cosmos for Life” –From Supernova to Super Bubbles Posted on Jul 29, 2021 in Astrobiology, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Science Supernova explosions release as much energy in a second as our Sun will in its entire 10-billion year existence. Without supernovae, “there would be no computer chips, trilobites, Mozart or the tears of a little girl,” wrote science writer Clifford A. Pickover.When a massive star explodes at the end of its life, the explosion ejects essential elements – carbon, oxygen, and iron – that form the basis for life across the universe. The supernovae also release tremendous amounts of radiative,...

(CNN)Astronomers have discovered a new type of supernova, or star explosion, and it provides a new window into the violent life cycle of stars. The new research, focused on supernova 2018zd, confirms a prediction made by University of Tokyo astronomer Ken'ichi Nomoto more than 40 years ago.... ...Typically, supernovae occur in two flavors. During a core-collapse supernova, a massive star (more than 10 times the mass of our sun) exhausts its fuel and the star's core caves in to a black hole or a dense remnant called a neutron star. The other type is called a thermonuclear supernova, and it...

(NASA/CXC/SAO/P.Slane, et al.) ====================================================================================== A ghostly "hand" reaching through the cosmos has just given us new insight into the violent deaths of massive stars. The spectacular structure is the ejecta from a core-collapse supernova, and, by taking images of it over a 14-year span, astronomers have been able to observe as it blasts into space at around 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) per second. At the very tips of the "fingers", the supernova remnant and blast wave - named MSH 15-52 - is punching into a cloud of gas called RCW 89, generating shocks and knots in the material, and...

(ALMA - ESO/NAOJ/NRAO, E/O'Gorman/P.Kervella) ========================================================================= In the wake of recent fluctuations in Betelgeuse's brightness, astronomers have rigorously examined the star's vital statistics, and come up with a bit of a surprise. According to the team led by researchers at Australian National University (ANU), the results change a few important things about our favourite red giant. "The actual physical size of Betelgeuse has been a bit of a mystery – earlier studies suggested it could be bigger than the orbit of Jupiter," says astronomer László Molnár from the Konkoly Observatory in Hungary. "Our results say Betelgeuse only extends out to two...

In its 4.5 billion year history, Earth has had to run the gauntlet. Numerous catastrophes have imperilled the planet, from massive impacts, to volcanic conflagrations, to frigid episodes of snowball Earth. Yet life persists. Among all of the hazards that threaten a planet, the most potentially calamitous might be a nearby star exploding as a supernova. When a massive enough star reaches the end of its life, it explodes as a supernova (SN). The hyper-energetic explosion can light up the sky for months, turning night into day for any planets close enough. If a planet is too close, it will...

In its 4.5 billion year history, Earth has had to run the gauntlet. Numerous catastrophes have imperilled the planet, from massive impacts, to volcanic conflagrations, to frigid episodes of snowball Earth. Yet life persists. Among all of the hazards that threaten a planet, the most potentially calamitous might be a nearby star exploding as a supernova. Whan a massive enough star reaches the end of its life, it explodes as a supernova. The hyper-energetic explosion can light up the sky for months, turning night into day for any planets close enough. If a planet is too close, it will be...

When humanity finally detected the collision between two neutron stars in 2017, we confirmed a long-held theory - in the energetic fires of these incredible explosions, elements heavier than iron are forged. And so, we thought we had an answer to the question of how these elements - including gold - propagated throughout the Universe. But a new analysis has revealed a problem. According to new galactic chemical evolution models, neutron star collisions don't even come close to producing the abundances of heavy elements found in the Milky Way galaxy today. "Neutron star mergers did not produce enough heavy elements...

Gold is an element, which means you can't make it through ordinary chemical reactions — though alchemists tried for centuries. To make the sparkly metal, you have to bind 79 protons and 118 neutrons together to form a single atomic nucleus. That's an intense nuclear fusion reaction. But such intense fusion doesn't happen frequently enough, at least not nearby, to make the giant trove of gold we find on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system. And a new study has found the most commonly-theorized origin of gold — collisions between neutron stars — can't explain gold's abundance either. So...

Radioactive elements synthesized in massive stars are ejected into space via stellar winds and supernova explosions. Our Solar System moves through the interstellar medium and collects these extrasolar products. One such product is iron-60. Because it is not naturally produced on Earth, the presence of this radioactive isotope is a sensitive indicator of supernova explosions within the last few million years. Australian National University’s Dr. Anton Wallner and colleagues previously found traces of iron-60 at about 2.6 million years ago, and possibly another at around 6 million years ago, suggesting our planet had traveled through fallout clouds from nearby supernovae....

GREENBELT, Md. - A new NASA space telescope will give scientists a peek at some of the most energetic objects and events in the universe. The new Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope to be launched next spring doesn't see visible light like our eyes, but gamma rays, the most energetic photons in the electromagnetic spectrum. They are produced by black holes, supernovae, neutron stars and other phenomena. GLAST will be the first gamma ray observatory to survey the entire sky. Scientists are hoping it will provide clues about dark matter, the early universe and allow them to test fundamental principles...

An international team of astronomers led by Yale University and the University of California-Santa Cruz have pushed back the cosmic frontier of galaxy exploration to a time when the universe was only 5% of its present age. The team discovered an exceptionally luminous galaxy more than 13 billion years in the past and determined its exact distance from Earth using the powerful MOSFIRE instrument on the W.M. Keck Observatory's 10-meter telescope, in Hawaii. It is the most distant galaxy currently measured. The galaxy, EGS-zs8-1, was originally identified based on its particular colors in images from NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space...

When a shot is fired, one expects to see a person with a gun. In the same way, whenever a giant star explodes, astronomers expect to see a galaxy of stars surrounding the site of the blast. This comes right out of basic astronomy, since almost all stars in our universe belong to galaxies. Image right: The robotic Palomar 60-inch telescope imaged the afterglow of GRB 070125 on January 26, 2007. Right: An image taken of the same field on February 16 with the 10-meter Keck I telescope reveals no trace of an afterglow, or a host galaxy. The white...