VIDEO: death of rare cocooned star captured by NASA
A TEAM OF astronomers from NASA have captured the death of a cocooned star, which resulted in a much more violent explosion than is typical for a supernova.
Scientists from the Australian National University, who also witnessed the event, explained that the big explosion can be attributed to the stars dense shell of gas and dust.
Occurring almost 1.3 billion light years away, the explosion lasted for only a few days, which is 10 times faster than other supernovas.
According to a statement by the ANU, when the massive amount of energy from the explosion slammed into the shell, most of the kinetic energy was immediately converted to light.
“We’ve discovered yet another way that stars die and distribute material back into space,” said ANU astrophysicist Brad Tucker.
The rare explosion was captured by the Kepler Space Telescope.
“Kepler just makes all the difference here,” Dr Armin Rest, from the Space Telescope Science Institute said.
“When I first saw the Kepler data, and realised how short this transient is, my jaw dropped.”
“Using Kepler’s high-speed light-measuring capabilities, we’ve been able to see this exotic star explosion in incredible detail,” Dr Tucker said.
“With the imminent launch of NASA’s new space telescope, TESS, we hope to find even more of these rare and violent explosions.”
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