Four Indian Astronomers Accompanied By Foreign Scientists Trace Rare Supernova Explosion | India News

NEW DELHI: A team of four Indian astronomers, along with international collaborators, tracked a rare supernova explosion and traced it to one of the hottest stars known as the Wolf-Rayet stars (WR stars), which are very bright objects a thousand times superior to those of the Sun.
WR stars are massive stars and strip their outer shell of hydrogen, which is associated with the fusion of helium and other elements in the massive nucleus. Tracking certain types of massive luminous supernova explosion can help probe these stars which remain a puzzle to scientists around the world.
The four Indian scientists of the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital, an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology, and 16 scientists from different institutes in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland and Italy, Sweden and Korea carried out optical surveillance of such a naked-envelope supernova called SN 2015dj hosted in the galaxy NGC 7371. They calculated the mass of the star that collapsed to form the supernovae as well as the geometry of its ejection. Scientists also discovered that the original star was a combination of two stars – one of them is a huge WR star and the other is a star much less in mass than the Sun.
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from South Korea, Mridweeka Singh, who was part of ARIES when the supernova discovery was made, said: “This supernova was discovered in 2015. We have observed the supernova for up to 170 days since its discovery. Subsequently, we submitted the manuscript in February of last year and it was accepted on January 22 of this year. The document is now available online and is in the process of being published. ”
Mridweeka, who moved to South Korea in 2019 after leaving the institute and currently works for the Korea Institute of Astronomy and Space Science, said

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, “SN 2015dj is a type Ib supernova whose progenitor was in a binary system with a mass between 13 and 20 M_sun. The geometry of the explosion was symmetrical for this supernova. The team’s discovery and detailed study were recently published in ‘The Astrophysics Journal“.
Supernovae (SNe) are highly energetic explosions in the universe releasing an enormous amount of energy. Long-term monitoring of these transients opens the door to understanding the nature of the star’s explosion as well as the explosion properties. It can also help count the number of massive stars.
Long-term monitoring of these transients opens the door to understanding the nature of the star’s explosion as well as the explosion properties. It can also help count the number of massive stars.