Supernova Caught Exploding On Camera

[weatherbud]

A supernova is a dying star, but one much bigger than Earth's sun. It first explodes outwards, then shrinks into itself to form an extremely dense, cold ball. Sometimes a neutron star results and sometimes a black hole.The death of a star has been witnessed as it occurred for the first time, a remarkable observation that will lead to new insights into this cataclysmic cosmic process.

Galaxies typically host a supernova - star death - only once or twice every century, making it nearly impossible to capture the instant it starts to spew energy into space, briefly shining brighter than billions of stars combined.

But the lucky glimpse by a satellite of the spectacular outburst from the very beginning has allowed astronomers from around the world to quickly follow up with eight other orbiting and ground-based telescopes and collect a wealth of new information on what happens when a star is blown to smithereens.

Before And After:


Sources:
Supernova sighting leaves astronomers agog
Blue Collar Scientist - The Historic Supernova 2008D
Supernova caught exploding on camera - Yahoo! News

[zacaroo]

Thats pretty spectacular.

[summer]

Soon our sun will also died and I wonder what will happen to our planet. maybe by that time people found another planet to live on.

[summer]

We can't say what might going to happen..of course people are dead before our sun explode ..I don't think that there's still living things here on our planet by if the sun change its color to orange or red...hmm maybe rich people who can afford good shelter can survive the too much heat...

[Waveform]

I suppose I would not worry too much about the Sun.
It has enough Hydrogen to keep it relatively stable for the next 5^9 (five billion) years. After that point it will start to utilize helium as fuel. It will expand in size to well beyond the earth and pretty well destroy Mars and Jupiter.

However, that's not to say before then it will not do something strange or catastrophic. But it is a main sequence 'G2V' type star and the others in the galaxy of this type seem quite steadfast.
It's a stable star by association if nothing else.

So, by the time it does run out of Hydrogen in about five billion years we will be long gone one way or the other; 1 (we survived and evolved into something almost incomprehensible to us in this time), 2 ( we simply did not survive as a species, we did ourselves in somehow).