Merger Between Two Stars Led To Blue Supergiant, Iconic Supernova

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A core-collapse supernova occurs when the core of a massive star can no longer withstand its own gravity. The core collapses in on itself, triggering a violent explosion that blasts away the star's outer layers, leaving behind a neutron star or black hole.

In 1987, astronomers saw a star explode in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of our galaxy's closest neighbors. Since then, scientists have intensively studied the aftermath of this supernova, known as SN 1987A, to understand the nature of the progenitor star and its fate.

The progenitor of this type of supernova is usually a red supergiant, but observations have shown that SN 1987A was caused by a compact blue supergiant. "It has been a mystery why the progenitor star was a blue supergiant," says Masaomi Ono at the RIKEN Astrophysical Big Bang Laboratory.

Meanwhile, X-ray and gamma-ray observations of SN 1987A have revealed clumps of radioactive nickel in the ejected matter. This nickel was formed in the star's core during its collapse, and is now hurtling away from the star at speeds of more than 4,000 kilometers per second. Previous simulations of the supernova had been unable to fully explain how this nickel could escape so rapidly.

Masaomi Ono et al. Matter Mixing in Aspherical Core-collapse Supernovae: Three-dimensional Simulations with Single-star and Binary Merger Progenitor Models for SN 1987A, The Astrophysical Journal (2020). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab5dba

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