Discovered on 5 September 1784 by astronomer William Herschel, the Veil Nebula was once a star. Now it is a twisted mass of shock waves that appears six times larger than the full Moon in the sky.
Astronomy
Mar 9, 2015
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A supernova that signals the death of a massive star sends titanic shock waves rumbling through interstellar space. An ultra-dense neutron star is usually left behind, which is far from dead, as it spews out a blizzard of ...
Astronomy
Nov 20, 2014
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(Phys.org) —The destructive results of a mighty supernova explosion reveal themselves in a delicate blend of infrared and X-ray light, as seen in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray Observatory, ...
Astronomy
Aug 22, 2014
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More than four centuries after Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe first observed the supernova that bears his name, the supernova remnant it created is now a bright source of X-rays. The supersonic expansion of the exploded star ...
Astronomy
Jul 25, 2014
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X-rays streaming toward Earth from the region near a neutron star that is cannibalizing its companion star have revealed the pair to be the youngest "X-ray binary" yet known. The discovery by a team that includes a Penn State ...
Astronomy
Dec 4, 2013
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When a star explodes as a supernova, it shines brightly for a few weeks or months before fading away. Yet the material blasted outward from the explosion still glows hundreds or thousands of years later, forming a picturesque ...
Astronomy
Nov 25, 2013
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Observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have revealed a massive cloud of multimillion-degree gas in a galaxy about 60 million light years from Earth. The hot gas cloud is likely caused by a collision between a ...
Astronomy
Aug 14, 2013
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(Phys.org) —Supernovae were always thought to occur in two main varieties. But a team of astronomers including Carnegie's Wendy Freedman, Mark Phillips and Eric Persson is reporting the discovery of a new type of supernova ...
Astronomy
Mar 26, 2013
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(Phys.org)—During a chance encounter with what appears to be an unusually strong blast of solar wind at Saturn, NASA's Cassini spacecraft detected particles being accelerated to ultra-high energies. This is similar to the ...
Space Exploration
Feb 20, 2013
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An automated supernova hunt is shedding new light on the death sequence of massive stars—specifically, the kind that self-destruct in Type IIn supernova explosions.
Astronomy
Feb 6, 2013
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