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Articles on Supernova

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When two neutron stars merge and create a black hole, they produce a powerful blast of gamma rays. A. Simonnet (Sonoma State Univ.) and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Unusual, long-lasting gamma-ray burst challenges theories about these powerful cosmic explosions that make gold, uranium and other heavy metals

Gamma-ray bursts occur when a massive star explodes or when two neutron stars merge. A newly discovered burst has puzzled astronomers, as it lasted much longer than astronomers would have expected.
Woodcut from Camille Flammarion’s 1888 book L'Atmosphère : météorologie populaire. The caption reads: ‘A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch’ and continues, ‘What is there, then, in this blue sky, which certainly exists, and which veils the stars during the day?’ Wikipedia

Einstein’s two mistakes

Albert Einstein may have been the ultimate example of a visionary genius, but that did not stop him from twice losing his way due to beliefs that were perhaps not so scientific.
The good thing about space is that – even though it has lots of dangerous stuff floating in it, and lots of exploding stars – it’s so big and empty that it almost doesn’t matter. NASA/CXC/U.Texas

Curious Kids: If a star explodes, will it destroy Earth?

Are there stars other than the Sun that might explode soon close to us? Yes, there are! As long as by ‘soon’ we mean within a million years.
The Sun is a star – but it’s not the only one. NASA/GSFC/Solar Dynamics Observatory

Curious Kids: Is there anything hotter than the Sun?

There are lots of places where it’s much, much hotter than the Sun. And the amazing thing is that this heat also makes new atoms - tiny particles that have made their way long ago from stars to us.
The bubbly cloud, called Puppis A, is an irregular shock wave, generated by a supernova that would have been witnessed on Earth 3,700 years ago. NASA

Solving the mystery of the wimpy supernova

A massive star, with a radius 500 times that of our sun, exploded. But the supernova fizzled – it was weak and dim. Figuring out what went wrong led to insights about how rare binary star systems form.
Technicians prepare Swift’s UVOT for vibration testing on Aug. 1, 2002, more than two years before launch, in the High Bay Clean Room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Swift’s telescope reveals birth, deaths and collisions of stars through 1 million snapshots in UV

The Swift Observatory passed a milestone: 1 million snapshots of the universe. These exquisite and revealing pictures have captured the births and deaths of stars, gravitational waves and comets.

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