the.com/supernova
a dying star's mic drop, forging the gold in your ring before going dark.
means A supernova is the catastrophic explosion of a dying star, briefly outshining an entire galaxy as it blasts its forged elements into space.
from From Latin: super, "above" or "beyond," stitched onto nova, "new" — itself short for stella nova, "new star," the name early astronomers gave to points of light that flared up where none had been seen before. The irony is built in: a nova looked new but was really something old and unstable erupting. "Supernova" was coined in the 1930s by astronomers Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky to mark a class of these blazes far more violent than ordinary novae — the truly cataclysmic ones, beyond new.
- brightness
- Can briefly outshine its entire host galaxy
- element factory
- Made the iron in your blood, the calcium in bones
- frequency
- One explodes somewhere every second across the universe
- speed
- Debris flies outward at 30,000 kilometers per second
- ancient record
- Chinese astronomers logged one in 1054 AD
kepler's supernova — observed by johannes kepler in 1604 in the constellation ophiuchus, the last supernova seen in the milky way
sn 1987a — exploded in the large magellanic cloud on february 23, 1987, brightest supernova visible from earth in 383 years
tycho's supernova — observed by tycho brahe in 1572, visible in daylight for weeks in the constellation cassiopeia