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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Hubble Pinpoints Doomed Star that Explodes as Supernova

Amidst the glitter of billions of stars in the majestic spiral galaxy called the Whirlpool (M51), a massive star abruptly ends its life in a brilliant flash of light. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope snapped images of the exploding star, called supernova (SN) 2005cs, 12 days after its discovery. Astronomers then compared those photos with Hubble images of the same region before the supernova blast to pinpoint the progenitor star (the star that exploded).

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Is it my imagination, or are stars going supernova at an alarming rate...

[Al Degutis]

Copyright © 2005 by Sidney Harris.

[Maddad]

Joe
If one star in a hundred is massive enough to go supernova, then out of the 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them are massive enough. Since a star that massive lives say only say 4,000,000 years on average, then 250,000,000,000,000 of them will go supernova every year. That's 68,000,000,000 every night or 8,000 a second.

Still alarmed?

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

8,000 a second eh?

Great numerological explanation...I'm going to remember that one.

The life and death cycle of suns closely mirror our own. We are all connected.

[Maddad]

The one star in a hundred being massive enough to go supernova is a number I just pulled out of my behind. It may be only one star in a thousand. In that case you don't have anything to worry about because there'd be only 800 a second going supernova.