After the Kepler supernova explosion, no survivors were left behind

A new study argues that the explosion that Johannes Kepler observed in 1604 was caused by a merger of two stellar residues.

The Kepler supernova, of which only the supernova remnant remains, took place in the constellation of Ophiuchus, in the plane of the Milky Way, 16,300 light years from the sun. An international team led by the researcher Pilar Ruiz Lapuente (UB-IECC y CSIC), in which IAC researcher Jonay González Hernández participated, has tried to find the possible surviving star of the binary system in which the explosion took place.

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Credit: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias

Source / Image Courtesy

Credit: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias

Johannes Kepler's original drawing from De Stella Nova(1606) depicting the location of the supernova, marked with an N.

Source / Image Courtesy

Kepler's Supernova Remnant in 60 Seconds

Billions of times stronger than the biggest hydrogen bomb, the shockwave from the collapse of red supergiant star KSN 2011d touched off a wave of nuclear fusion producing heavy elements like gold, silver and uranium.

NASA's Kepler space telescope, which persistently stares at patches of sky, captured the death throws of the giant, 500X larger and 20,000 brighter than the Sun, located 1.2 billion light-years away.