A supernova is an extremely bright and powerful explosion of a dying, massive star that's at least five times the mass of the sun
A supernova is an extremely bright and powerful explosion of a dying, massive star that's at least five times the mass of the sun, according to NASA. Enormous stars burn large amounts of nuclear energy at their cores, which in turn makes the centers very hot. The heat generates outward pressure that prevents the star from collapsing.
The research team measured the newly discovered supernova using two scales: The total energy of the explosion, and the radiation -- or the amount of the explosion's energy that's visible as light, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. "This is one of the best examples we've had," he added."This is the type of event we estimate is something like one in 1,000 to one in 10,000 stars end their life in this way. So this is an extremely rare type of explosion and incredibly energetic. And this is exactly what we set out to find."The astronomers chose to follow up on this supernova because it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.
"To get to the regime where stars can experience this type of explosion, they need to be born with incredibly high masses. At least 70 times the mass of our sun and maybe up to 250 times the mass of the sun," Berger said."So stars like that are just incredibly rare. The other ingredient that's required is that the stars need to be born from gas that has low metal content.
When a star explodes, usually a nebula or black hole is left behind. But because SN2016aps is so bright and massive, it's taking years to fade enough to let astronomers see what's behind it. "This is amazing [that] a star like this probably lives somewhere between five and 10 million years ago, and we're seeing that in the very last, tiny fraction of that entire lifetime this star is becoming incredibly unstable," he added."That to me is one of the questions that's kind of driving the need to find more of these types of explosions."
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