Spotting the initial flash of an exploding supernova is extremely rare, to the point that NASA has only just managed to do it for the first time.
Known as a "shock breakout," NASA used the Kepler space telescope to capture and analyze the light of 500 distant galaxies every 30 minutes for 3 years. The international team behind the discovery observed two red supergiants in an attempt to catch the beginnings of a supernova. The first, KSN 2011a, which is 300 times the size of our sun, didn't present the desired shock breakout, while KSN 2011d, a supergiant about 500 times larger that the sun, did.
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Known as a "shock breakout," NASA used the Kepler space telescope to capture and analyze the light of 500 distant galaxies every 30 minutes for 3 years. The international team behind the discovery observed two red supergiants in an attempt to catch the beginnings of a supernova. The first, KSN 2011a, which is 300 times the size of our sun, didn't present the desired shock breakout, while KSN 2011d, a supergiant about 500 times larger that the sun, did.
Continue reading…
Continue reading...