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Science & Tech.
Pradeep Kumar

07/04/21 09:25 AM IST

Supernova explosion traced

In news

Indian astronomers have tracked a rare supernova explosion and traced it to one of the hottest kind of stars called Wolf–Rayet stars or WR stars

Highlights
  • The rare Wolf–Rayet stars are highly luminous objects a thousand times that of the Sun and have intrigued astronomers for long.
  • They are massive stars and strip their outer hydrogen envelope which is associated with the fusion of Helium and other elements in the massive core.
  • Tracking of certain types of massive luminous supernovae explosion can help probe these stars that remain an enigma for scientists.
About the research
  • A team of astronomers from Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital have conducted the optical monitoring of one such stripped-envelope supernova called SN 2015dj hosted in the galaxy NGC 7371 which was spotted in 2015.
  • They calculated the mass of the star that collapsed to form the supernovae as well as the geometry of its ejection. 
  • The scientists also found that the original star was a combination of two stars – one of them is a massive WR star and another is a star much less in mass than the Sun.
Supernova
  • Supernovae (SNe) are highly energetic explosions in the Universe releasing an enormous amount of energy.
  • Long-term monitoring of these transients opens the door to understand the nature of the exploding star as well as the explosion properties.
  • It can also help enumerate the number of massive stars.
Source: PIB

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