
What Are Novas and Supernovas and How Are They Different?
Sunday, August 15th, 2010
The question for our astronomer: Why do some stars explode to become a supernova while other stars throw off a much smaller nova explosion? The answer: What distinguishes the monster annihilative explosion of a supernova from the smaller explosion that astronomers call a nova pertains to the initial mass of the star. A star like our Sun isn’t large enough to supernova. Bigger stars do contain enough mass to go supernova.Antares, Betelgeuse and Rigel are a few nearby massive stars that will sometime in the future go supernova. The star Antares is so large that if you superimposed this star against our own solar system, it would be larger than the orbit of Mars. Generally speaking, massive stars actually burn cooler than those smaller stars like our own Sun. When forecasting the type of the explosion of a dying star, astrophysicists count the age and size of that star. This is why our name a star program is so fascinating. You never know when a participant in the program will have adopted a galaxy that bears a star that goes supernova. This event would be headline astronomical news!
The question for our astronomer: Why do some stars explode to become a supernova while other stars throw off a much smaller nova explosion? The answer: What distinguishes the monster annihilative explosion of a supernova from the smaller explosion that astronomers call a nova pertains to the initial mass of the star. A star like our Sun isn’t large enough to supernova. Bigger stars do contain enough mass to go supernova.Antares, Betelgeuse and Rigel are a few nearby massive stars that will sometime in the future go supernova. The star Antares is so large that if you superimposed this star against our own solar system, it would be larger than the orbit of Mars. Generally speaking, massive stars actually burn cooler than those smaller stars like our own Sun. When forecasting the type of the explosion of a dying star, astrophysicists count the age and size of that star. This is why our name a star program is so fascinating. You never know when a participant in the program will have adopted a galaxy that bears a star that goes supernova. This event would be headline astronomical news!
