NASA astronomers Monday reported the biggest and brightest star explosion ever recorded, a blast whose light began reaching Earth in the past year from 240 million light years away.
The remnants of the explosion pose no threat to people or electronics on Earth, but the blast offers hints of a future fireworks display from another, much closer star — a mere 7,500 light years away — that has been on astronomers' death-watch list for some time.
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory satellite images show the exploding star, or supernova, SN 2006gy, blew apart a distant star some 150 times heavier than our sun, says Chandra team leader Nathan Smith of the University of California at Berkeley.
Massive stars explode when they finish consuming their own envelope of gases, essentially collapsing under their own weight and enriching surrounding space with radioactive ash. Discovery that a massive star can retain most of its mass before blasting apart, instead of shedding weight in a long series of preparatory eruptions, defies explanation.
"The fact the star retained most of its mass before exploding is startling," says Smith
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