Astro Blog

https://www.science.org/content/article/stellar-remains-famed-1987-supernova-found-last By DANIEL CLERY , Science.  Excerpt: When a nearby star exploded in 1987, it created the first supernova visible to the naked eye in 4 centuries and became one of the most intensely studied objects in space. Now, after more than 35 years of searching, researchers have finally discovered the cinder left behind. Using NASA’s new giant space telescope JWST, astronomers spotted  glowing gas at the center of the blast that can only have been energized by something hot and compact inside it , they report this week in Science. They believe a neutron star, all that remains of the shattered star, is responsible.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/opinion/pulsars-jocelyn-bell-burnell-astronomy.html Source: By Ben Proudfoot, The New York Times.  Excerpt: [see video] In 1967, [Jocelyn] Burnell made a discovery that altered our perception of the universe. As a Ph.D. student at Cambridge University assisting the astronomer Anthony Hewish, she discovered pulsars —  compact, spinning celestial objects  that give off beams of radiation, like cosmic lighthouses. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/science/ligo-neutron-stars-collision.html Source:   By Dennis Overbye, The New York Times 2017-10-16. . . For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 9. Excerpt: Astronomers announced on Monday that they had seen and heard a pair of dead stars collide, giving them their first glimpse of the violent process by which most of the gold and silver in the universe was created. The collision, known as a kilonova, rattled the galaxy in which it happened 130 million light-years from here in the southern constellation of Hydra, and sent fireworks across the universe. On Aug. 17, the event set off sensors in space and on Earth, .... Such explosions, astronomers have long suspected, produced many of the heavier elements in the universe, including precious metals like gold, silver and uranium. ...a pair of neutron stars, the shrunken dense cores of stars that have exploded and died, collided at nearly the speed of light. These stars are masses as great as the sun pa...