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Astronomers Watch in Real Time as Epic Supernova Potentially Births a Black Hole
A team of astronomers recently captured a series of images of a distant star as it went supernova, providing a remarkable play-by-play of stellar death and possibly the birth of a black hole. Supernovae are massive explosions that occur when massive stars die. These events sometimes leave nebulae, neutron stars, or even black holes in…
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Double Plumes Spotted on Jupiter’s Cantankerous Volcanic Moon
NASA’s Juno spacecraft captured new images of Jupiter’s moon Io during its latest flyby, coming within an eerily close distance of the most volcanically active world in the solar system for a second time in less than two months. The close encounter also shows what appears to be a pair of plumes erupting from the…
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Webb Spots Second Ancient Supernova in Gravitationally Lensed Galaxy
Last month, astronomers focused the Webb Space Telescope on the galaxy MRG-M0138 and found something surprising: a supernova in the ancient universe, magnified for your viewing pleasure by the gravitational lensed galaxy. When stars die, they release a huge amount of energy which astronomers can observe as a bright light source called a supernova. The…
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The Best Space Images of 2023
Space is an inky black yonder… but for the countless light sources that pepper the billions of light-years that human instruments can see. Thanks to ground-based telescopes and observatories parked millions of miles from Earth, 2023 has been a terrific year for space imagery. Astronomers captured fascinating new views of globular clusters, star systems, and…