One Supernova Type, Two Different Sources
The exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae serve an important role in measuring the universe, and were used to discover the existence of dark energy. View More (2012-05-08)
Black hole caught red-handed in stellar homicide
Astronomers have gathered the most direct evidence yet of a supermassive black hole shredding a star that wandered too close. View More (2012-05-03)
Black Hole Caught Red-Handed in a Stellar Homicide
Astronomers have gathered the most direct evidence yet of a supermassive black hole shredding a star that wandered too close. NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, a space-based observatory, and the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on the summit of Haleakala in Hawaii were among the first to help identify the stellar remains. View More (2012-05-03)
Explosive Stars with Good Table Manners
An exploding star known as a Type Ia supernova plays a key role in our understanding of the universe. View More (2012-03-21)
Glittering jewels of Messier 9
Messier 9, pictured here, is a globular cluster, a roughly spherical swarm of stars that lies around 25 000 light-years from Earth, near the centre of the Milky Way, so close that the gravitational forces from the galactic centre pull it slightly out of shape. View More (2012-03-16)
Astronomers watch delayed broadcast of a rare celestial eruption
Eta Carinae, one of the most massive stars in our Milky Way galaxy, unexpectedly increased in brightness in the 19th century. View More (2012-02-16)
Earliest-yet observation of August supernova nails it: Destroyed star was white dwarf
Last year's discovery of the nearest Type Ia supernova in decades - captured only 11 hours after it exploded - allowed astronomers to finally cinch the identity of the stars behind these explosions, which have become key measures of cosmic distance. View More (2012-01-12)
LSU astronomers discover origin of thermonuclear supernova
LSU astronomers recently discovered the solution to a long-standing fundamental problem of astrophysics: what produces thermonuclear, or Type Ia, supernovae, which are tremendous explosions where the light is often brighter than a whole galaxy? View More (2012-01-12)
Fear no supernova
Given the incredible amounts of energy in a supernova explosion - as much as the sun creates during its entire lifetime - another erroneous doomsday theory is that such an explosion could happen in 2012 and harm life on Earth. View More (2011-12-19)
Scientists publish new findings about the 'supernova of a generation'
An international team of scientists, including astrophysicists from UC Santa Barbara, has discovered that a supernova that exploded in August -- dubbed the supernova of a generation -- was a "white dwarf" star, and that its companion star could not have been a "red giant," as previously suspected. View More (2011-12-15)
NASA's Fermi shows that Tycho's star shines in gamma rays
In early November 1572, observers on Earth witnessed the appearance of a "new star" in the constellation Cassiopeia, an event now recognized as the brightest naked-eye supernova in more than 400 years. View More (2011-12-14)
UCSB scientist contributes to discovery of the fastest-rotating massive star ever recorded
An international team of scientists has found the fastest-rotating massive star ever recorded. View More (2011-12-06)
In a star's final days, astronomers hunt 'signal of impending doom'
An otherwise nondescript binary star system in the Whirlpool Galaxy has brought astronomers tantalizingly close to their goal of observing a star just before it goes supernova. View More (2011-12-01)
NASA's Swift Finds a Gamma-Ray Burst With a Dual Personality
A peculiar cosmic explosion first detected by NASA's Swift observatory on Christmas Day 2010 was caused either by a novel type of supernova located billions of light-years away or an unusual collision much closer to home, within our own galaxy. View More (2011-12-01)
In The Heart Of Cygnus, NASA's Fermi Reveals A Cosmic-ray Cocoon
The constellation Cygnus, now visible in the western sky as twilight deepens after sunset, hosts one of our galaxy's richest-known stellar construction zones. View More (2011-11-29)
VLBA observations key to 'complete description' of black hole
For the first time, astronomers have produced a complete description of a black hole, a concentration of mass so dense that not even light can escape its powerful gravitational pull. View More (2011-11-18)
The cool clouds of Carina -- APEX gives us a new view of star formation in the Carina Nebula
Using the LABOCA camera on the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope on the plateau of Chajnantor in the Chilean Andes, a team of astronomers led by Thomas Preibisch (Universitats-Sternwarte Munchen, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, Germany), in close cooperation with Karl Menten and Frederic Schuller (Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie, Bonn, Germany), imaged the region in... View More (2011-11-16)
Discovery of 2 types of neutron stars points to 2 different classes of supernovae
Astronomers at the universities of Southampton and Oxford have found evidence that neutron stars, which are produced when massive stars explode as supernovae, actually come in two distinct varieties. View More (2011-11-10)
Crab Pulsar emits light at highest energies ever detected in a pulsar system, scientists report
An international team of scientists has detected the highest energy gamma rays ever observed from a pulsar, a highly magnetized and rapidly spinning neutron star. View More (2011-10-07)
Galaxy caught blowing bubbles
The intricate glowing shells of gas in Holmberg II were created by the energetic lifecycles of many generations of stars. High-mass stars form in dense regions of gas, and later in life expel strong stellar winds that blow away the surrounding material. View More (2011-09-29)
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