Author: Lisa Grossman / Source: Science News
A faint, fleeting supernova may be the key to understanding how neutron star duos are born.
Astronomers have spotted what seems to be an ultrastripped supernova: a massive star in its death throes after its outer layers of gas have been siphoned off slowly by a compact companion such as a neutron star or black hole.
“This is the first of its kind: the first ultrastripped supernova that has been observed,” says astronomer Kishalay De of Caltech. Similar supernovas could lead to binary neutron stars like the pair that was caught colliding in 2017, he and his colleagues report in the Oct. 12 Science.
The supernova was spotted exploding in a galaxy about 930 million light-years away from Earth by the robotic intermediate Palomar Transient Factory in October 2014, and was named iPTF 14gqr after that wide-field survey. Most supernovas detonate when a star more than eight times as massive as the sun has burned through all its fuel and can no longer…
The post The first observed wimpy supernova may have birthed a neutron star duo appeared first on FeedBox.