Tag Archive for 'Nova'

An artist’s impression of the fireball around a white dwarf. Image credit: ROSITA Collaboration / Annika Kreikenbohm.

eROSITA Detects X-rays from Nova in Fireball Phase

Sep 22, 2022 by News Staff

Novae are caused by runaway thermonuclear burning in the hydrogen-rich atmospheres of accreting white dwarfs, which leads to a rapid expansion of the atmosphere...

https://cdn.sci.news/images/2022/04/image_10734-Micronova.jpg

New Type of Nova Discovered: Micronova

Apr 21, 2022 by News Staff

A micronova is a thermonuclear blast that happens on the surface of certain stars and lasts for just a few hours making them extremely difficult to observe. This...

MAGIC Telescopes Detect Gamma Rays from Recurrent Nova

Apr 14, 2022 by News Staff

Astronomers using the MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov) telescopes have detected gamma rays from the 2021 outburst of RS Ophiuchi, a recurrent...

V906 Carinae (circled) shines near peak brightness in this image taken on March 23, 2018, three days after the nova was discovered. The beautiful cloud of gas and dust dominating the picture is part of the Carina Nebula. Image credit: A. Maury / J. Fabrega.

Astronomers Track Shock Waves in Nova V906 Carinae

Apr 15, 2020 by News Staff

A nova is a sudden, short-lived brightening of an otherwise inconspicuous star. It occurs when a stream of hydrogen from a companion star flows onto the...

Using the MUSE, an integral-field spectrograph on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, Göttgens et al discovered the remains of a nova near the center of the globular cluster Messier 22. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / F. Göttgens, Institute for Astrophysics, University of Göttingen.

Astronomers Find Ancient Nova Remnant in Messier 22

Apr 30, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

A nova is a cataclysmic event on the surface of a white dwarf star in a binary stellar system that increases the overall brightness by several orders of...

The Steward 2.3-m Bok Telescope image of M31N 2008-12a and its surrounding super-remnant. Image credit: Darnley et al, doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0825-4.

Astronomers Find Nova Super-Remnant in Andromeda Galaxy

Jan 14, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has found that M31N 2008-12a, a frequently erupting ‘nova’ located in the Andromeda Galaxy, is surrounded by a...

CK Vulpeculae resides in the constellation Vulpecula. It is just below the star Albireo, the head of Cygnus, the swan. That location is inside the Summer Triangle of bright stars, which is now high in the south after nightfall. The star is approximately 2,200 light-years from Earth. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Eyres et al.

ALMA Discovers New Type of Stellar Collision

Oct 10, 2018 by News Staff

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers found evidence that a white dwarf and a brown dwarf collided in a ‘blaze of...

An artist’s impression of the collision of two stars, like the ones that formed CK Vulpeculae. The inset illustrates the inner structure of one red giant before the merger. A thin layer of 26Al (brown) surrounds a helium core. An extended convective envelope (not to scale), which forms the outermost layer of the star, can mix material from inside the star to the surface, but it never reaches deep enough to dredge 26Al up to the surface. Only a collision with another star can disperse 26Al. Image credit: NRAO / AUI / NSF / S. Dagnello.

Radioactive Molecule Found in Stellar Merger Remnant

Aug 2, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) have made the first definitive...

SMCN 2016-10a was discovered on October 14, 2016. Novae occur frequently in our Milky Way Galaxy, with a rate of around 35 each year, but SMCN 2016-10a is the first nova to have been detected in the Small Magellanic Cloud since 2012. Left: the nova system before eruption. Right: the nova system in outburst. Image credit: OGLE Survey.

Astronomers Discover One of Most Luminous Novae Ever

Oct 11, 2017 by News Staff

In a nearby dwarf galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud, astronomers have discovered possibly the most luminous nova ever. SMCN 2016-10a was discovered...

The recovered nova of 1437 and its ejected shell (false color). The now-quiescent star that produced the nova shell is indicated with greenish-blue tick marks; it is far from the shell’s center today. However, its measured motion across the sky places it at the greenish-blue plus sign in 1437. The position of the center of the shell in 2016 and its deduced position in 1437 are indicated with yellow and magenta plus signs, respectively. Image credit: K. Ilkiewicz & J. Mikolajewska.

Astronomers Pinpoint Location of Nova First Spotted by Koreans 580 Years Ago

Aug 31, 2017 by News Staff

On March 11, 1437, Korean royal astronomers spotted a bright new star in the constellation Scorpius. From the ancient records, modern astronomers determined...

An artist’s rendering of a classical nova. Image credit: David Hardy, www.astroart.org.

‘Pre-Solar Grains’ Could Be Remnants of Ancient Novae

Mar 11, 2016 by News Staff

Tiny particles of stardust have been found in meteorites. Whether some of these particles, known as ‘pre-solar grains,’ came from classical novae is...

This image shows Nova Centauri 2013 (brightest star in the center) in July 2015. This was more than eighteen months after the initial explosive outburst. Image credit: ESO.

Astronomers Detect Lithium in Nova for First Time

Jul 29, 2015 by News Staff

Using the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at the La Silla Observatory and the ESO 0.5-m telescope at the Observatory of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de...

This image shows the remnant of CK Vulpeculae; the image was created from a combination of visible-light images from the Gemini telescope, blue, a submillimeter map showing the dust from the SMA, green, and finally a map of the molecular emission from APEX and the SMA, red. Image credit: ESO / T. Kamiński.

Ground-Based Telescopes Reveal Secrets of Enigmatic Nova CK Vulpeculae

Mar 23, 2015 by News Staff

According to an international group of astronomers led by Dr Tomasz Kamiński of ESO and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany,...

Astronomers have reported near-infrared interferometric measurements of the angular size of Nova Delphini 2013, starting one day after the explosion and continuing with extensive time coverage during the first 43 days. The image shows Tycho's supernova remnant. Image credit: X-ray - NASA / CXC / SAO; infrared - NASA / JPL-Caltech; optical - MPIA / Calar Alto / O.Krause et al.

Astronomers Capture Nova Delphinus 2013 during its Early Fireball Stage

Oct 28, 2014 by News Staff

For the first time, scientists have captured images of a nova during its early fireball stage – when it ejects material, and gases expand and cool....

Swift Discovers New Black Hole in Milky Way

Oct 9, 2012 by Sergio Prostak

The team of astrophysicists using NASA’s Swift satellite has discovered a rare X-ray nova in our Galaxy. According to the team, this object reveals...