Astronomers catch a supernova just as its big boom begins
 Alison Klesman, Astronomhy Magazine | Monday, February 13, 2017

Observations taken just hours after a supernova explosion help to illuminate the environment of the star just before its death.



SNR E0519-69.0, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, is a supernova remnant left behind after a massive star exploded. Such expanding remnants are all that remain after the shock wave tears through the progenitor star and its nearby environment.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/J.Hughes; Optical: NASA/STScI

When massive stars (on the order of ten or more times the mass of our Sun) end their lives, they go out with a bang. In an instant, these stars send out a massive shock wave as type II supernovae, spreading the contents of their interiors — hydrogen, helium, and heavier elements that include silicon, oxygen, and iron — into the interstellar medium, sprinkling the materials of future stars and solar systems throughout the galaxy.

Supernovae have been observed, both within our galaxy and in other galaxies, for thousands of years, and their results can be seen as nebulae, neutron stars, and black holes. But what is it that actually makes these stars go bang? The answer is: We don’t know.

But Ofer Yaron of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and his colleagues have just brought us a little closer to finding that answer. In a paper recently published in the journal Nature Physics, Yaron and his colleagues report their measurements of supernova SN2013fs, which exploded in the nearly galaxy NGC 7610 in 2013. Their results represent some of the earliest post-explosion follow-up observations of a supernova event, including the earliest spectra of a supernova ever, shedding light on the dying star’s final days.