• Question: duh hello i like to know how big is a super nova

    Asked by ahmed fuad ahmed hussein to Heather, Helen, Hugh, Julian on 19 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Julian Onions

      Julian Onions answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      Its enormous – its one of the biggest things that happens in the universe.
      Consider this. Which is brighter, a hydrogen bomb detonated right next to your eye, or our sun where it is now, 93,000,000 miles away going supernova?
      It’s the sun going supernova that wins, and not just by a little bit, by a HUGE factor.
      We expect a star to go supernova in our galaxy soon, and when it does, it will be visible in the daytime.
      Luckily none of the obvious candidate stars are very near us, or we might get fried!

    • Photo: Heather Campbell

      Heather Campbell answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      Supernova are huge explosions of stars that can outshine a whole galaxy. They happen for the end of massive stars (about more than 8*times the mass of the sun), and blow off most of that material, only a small amount collapsing back into either a neutron star ( a v dense star) or a black hole, so dense nothing can escape!

      Others called type Ia supernovae are from white dwarf stars (about half the mass of the sun in the size of the earth, so each sugar cube has about a rhinos worth of mass)which steels material from a companion until it is over 1.44times the mass of our sun, when it explodes, and these are all about -19.6magnitude.

      After a supernovae explosion the remnants remain for thousands of years, for example the crab nebula(in our own galaxy), which was a supernovae explosion in 1054, still has an expansing shell of material which is about 10light years across.

    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      I think these guys pretty much have it covered here 🙂
      I’ll just add that we’re really overdue for a supernova in our solar system – I think each galaxy is supposed to have one every 100 years or so? It’s been far longer than that for us! Betelgeuse is a bright red star in the shoulder of Orion, and we think this could turn supernova any day soon. At the moment it’s in what’s called a ‘Red Giant’ phase, which is what happens before a massive star explodes as a supernova at the end of its life. When it does this, it’ll probably be the brightest thing in our sky!

Comments