The NuStar (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) telescope has captured a spectacular image of Cassiopeia A , a remnant of a star that exploded as a supernova more than 11,000 years ago. Because the supernova was so far from Earth, its light reached our planet only 350 years ago.
Thanks to this finding, which has been published in the journal Nature , the international team of astrophysicists from NASA and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have managed to decipher one of the greatest mysteries of the astronomical world : how stars explode in explosions of supernovae.
A supernova is the cataclysmic death of a star; an extremely luminous process that causes an explosion of radiation that can briefly outshine an entire galaxy before fading completely. The explosion expels the remains of the star at a speed of 10% one hundred the speed of light, with a shock wave of gas and dust that is what we call the supernova remnant.
NuStar was then able to produce the map of radiactiv elements os in this supernova remnant. In this case, the element found is titanium-44. The discovery has suggested that the exploding star spreads or spills around it, reinvigorating the shock wave with energy and allowing the star to eventually explode in its outer layers.
