Supernovae are indeed amazing cosmic events, as they can compete even with entire galaxies in brightness and size. Although they’re mainly destructive, representing the explosion itself of stars, supernovae can even lead to the birth of other stars due to the resulting gas.
But supernovae never seem to have enough when it comes to leaving us speechless. According to SciTechDaily.com, a supernova occurred after a black hole or neutron star came in contact with another star.
A premiere in astronomy
Dillon Dong, lead author and a graduate student at Caltech, declared as quoted by SciTechDaily.com:
Theorists had predicted that this could happen, but this is the first time we’ve actually seen such an event.
The astronomers initiated observations of the VT 1210+4956 object using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and the Keck telescope from Hawaii. They were able to determine that the radio emission is originating in the edges of a star-forming galaxy located 480 million light-years away from us. Later, the International Space Station had found a burst of X-rays coming from the object.
Astronomers were capable in the end to solve the puzzle based on the data and conclude that two cosmic objects have driven each other to cosmic death. After the collision, a disk of material was created.
Dong said, as also quoted by SciTechDaily.com:
The companion star was going to explode eventually, but this merger accelerated the process.
There are plenty of amazing facts about supernovae, according to Space Answers. These cosmic objects created most of the chemical elements; one supernova occurs in the Universe every second, and so on.
However, let’s all hope that no supernova will ever occur near our planet.
A paper reporting the new discovery was published in Science.
