‘Cosmic Zombie’ Star Triggered This Explosion 1,000 Years Ago

(Before It's News)

An infrared image of N103B, the remainders of a supernova that exploded about 1,000 years ago in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Goddard

It might be a bad idea to get close to dead stars. Like a White Walker from Game of Thrones, this “cosmic zombie” white dwarf star was dangerous even though it was just a corpse of a star like our own. The result from this violence 1,000 years ago is still visible in the Spitzer Space Telescope picture you see above.

Astronomers believe the giant star was shedding material (a common phenomenon in older stars), which fell on to the white dwarf star. As the gas built up on the white dwarf over time, the mass became unstable and the dwarf exploded. What’s left is still lying in a pool of gas about 160,000 light-years away from us.

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© Elizabeth Howell for Universe Today, 2014. |
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Post tags: Large Magellanic Cloud, type 1a supernova, white dwarf

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