Shape of Star Explosions
Date Time 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 P...