Spectacular cosmic fireworks captured by Hubble

This spectacular image of the galaxy NGC 2442 was captured by the NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: ESA / Hubble and NASA, S. Smartt et al.

This image of NASA/THIS The Hubble Space Telescope presents the spectacular galaxy NGC 2442.

This galaxy was the host of a supernova explosion, known as SN2015F, which was created by a white dwarf star. The white dwarf was part of a binary star system and was siphoning off her mate’s mass, eventually becoming too greedy and taking more than she could handle. This knocked the star off balance and triggered an uncontrollable nuclear fusion which ultimately led to an extremely violent supernova explosion.

SN2015F was spotted in March 2015 in the galaxy named NGC 2442, nicknamed the Meathook Galaxy due to its extremely asymmetric and irregular shape. The supernova glowed for a while and was easily visible from Earth through even a small telescope until later this summer.

Credit: Changsu Choi & Myungshin Im (Seoul National University)

Sit back and watch a star explode. The actual supernova occurred when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, but images of the spectacular event started arriving in 2015. Supernova 2015F was discovered in the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 2442 by Berto Monard in March 2015 and was unusually brilliant – enough to be seen with only a small telescope. The luminosity variation model indicated a Type Ia supernova – a type of stellar explosion that occurs when an Earth-sized white dwarf gains so much mass that its core crosses the threshold of nuclear fusion, presumably caused by a lower mass white dwarf companion spiral. in it. Finding and tracking Type Ia supernovae is particularly important because their intrinsic luminosity can be calibrated, making their apparent luminosity a good measure of their distance – and therefore useful for calibrating the entire universe’s distance scale. . The featured video tracked the stellar disturbance before the explosion images arrived, as it cleared up, and over several months as the glow from the fission-fueled supernova faded. The remains of SN2015F are now too faint to be seen without a large telescope.