Webb’s study of the second-brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen reveals tellurium. Under what conditions many chemical elements are created in the universe has long been shrouded in mystery. This includes elements that are highly valuable, or even vital to life as we know it. Astronomers are now
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Shape of Star Explosions
When massive stars end their lives in fiery explosions called supernovae, their ashes fly outward to form expanding clouds of debris. While these clouds may look roughly spherical, astronomers think that star explosions are in fact lopsided events in which different amounts of material shoot outward in different directions.
Now, astronomers have a new tool to better understand the asymmetrical shapes of supernova explosions, and thus how stars explode in the first place. An instrument called “WIRC+Pol,” located at Caltech’s 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory, has delivered its first science results, which show that a supernova called SN 2018hna exploded in a shape more like an ellipse than a sphere, similar to the well-studied supernova remnant called SN 1987A.