NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has been peering through space dust to look at the closest-known supernova of its kind.
The researchers were able to look into the "heart of a stellar explosion," a NASA news release reported. The galaxy that hosts the supernova, M82 or the "Cigar galaxy," is extremely dusty which has made past observations difficult.
"At this point in the supernova's evolution, observations in infrared let us look the deepest into the event," Mansi Kasliwal, Hubble Fellow and Carnegie-Princeton Fellow at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science and the principal investigator for the Spitzer observations, said in the news release. . "Spitzer is really good for bypassing the dust and nailing down what's going on in and around the star system that spawned this supernova."
Supernovas are some of the most powerful events in the universe and can shine brighter than an entire galaxy. The newly-observed supernova, called SN 2014J, is a Type Ia. This type of supernova destroys a white dwarf star, which is what our sun is fated to become in its old age.
"First, in a binary star system, a white dwarf gravitationally pulls in matter from its companion star, accruing mass until the white dwarf crosses a critical threshold and blows up. In the second, two white dwarfs in a binary system spiral inward toward each other and eventually collide explosively," the news release reported.
Observing these types of supernovas could help researchers gain insight into the expansion of the universe because they explode with exactly the same amount of energy. The supernovas have been nicknamed "standard candles," because the fainter they are the farther away they are as well.
"Studying SN 2014J will help with understanding the processes behind Type Ia detonations to further refine theoretical models," the news release reported.
