by NASA telescopes have captured the colorful blast of a stellar explosion thousands of years ago, shedding new light on the evolution of such cosmic remains.
When a star reaches the end of its life, it explodes in a bright burst called a supernova.
White dwarfs are the dim, fading corpses of stars that have exhausted most of their nuclear fuel and shed their outer layers.
Having shrunk to a relatively small size, white dwarfs are considered among the most stable of stars, given they can last for billions or even trillions of years.
However, when a white dwarf passes near a neighboring star it may siphon too much material from its companion, causing it to grow unstable and explode, resulting in a Type Ia supernova.
That is the case of a stellar remnant — formally known as G344.7-0.1 — that is located roughly 19,600 light-years from Earth, and believed to be between 3,000 and 6,000 years old, according to a statement from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Source
When a star reaches the end of its life, it explodes in a bright burst called a supernova.
White dwarfs are the dim, fading corpses of stars that have exhausted most of their nuclear fuel and shed their outer layers.
Having shrunk to a relatively small size, white dwarfs are considered among the most stable of stars, given they can last for billions or even trillions of years.
However, when a white dwarf passes near a neighboring star it may siphon too much material from its companion, causing it to grow unstable and explode, resulting in a Type Ia supernova.
That is the case of a stellar remnant — formally known as G344.7-0.1 — that is located roughly 19,600 light-years from Earth, and believed to be between 3,000 and 6,000 years old, according to a statement from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Source
