Supernova: Five Stages in the Death of a Star 1. Just before explosion 2. The first light flash 3. The flash has gone 4. The proper Supernova 5. A long time after A red super-giant star The core collapses and After hitting the surface at The hot glowing surface The remains of the former approaches the end of its sends a shock wave out. 50 million km/h the shock expands quickly making star are spread over light life. There is no more fuel For a few hours the shock blows the star apart. The the fireball brighter again. years of space. They keep to burn and make it shine. compresses and heats the core turns into a neutron In a few days it will be 10x floating quickly, sweeping Soon its massive dense envelope, thus producing star, a compact atomic the size of the original star up interstellar gas here core is bound to collapse a very bright flash of light nucleus with the mass of and will be discovered by and there, leaving a faint under its own weight. from the inside of the star. the Sun but 10 km in size. supernova hunters. beautiful glow behind… Host galaxy Flash Supernova Schawinksi, Justham, Wolf, et al.: “Supernova shock breakout from a red supergiant”, published in Science 2008 Sources • Image of Veil Nebula a.k.a. • Illustrations and text by Cirrus Nebula by Johannes C. Wolf Schedler and taken from • Image composition by www.universetoday.com/ K. Schawinski am/uploads/veil_lrg.jpg • Image sources (all data are public archives) – Host galaxy NASA/HST, taken by COSMOS team – Supernova NASA/GALEX.