A nova is a relatively small surface explosion from a white dwarf below the Chandrasekhar limit of 1.4 solar masses. Novae can recur on timescales as short as a year. Large telescopes have been around ...

An international team of researchers has found evidence a supernova explosion that was first triggered by a helium detonation, reports a new study in Nature this week. A Type Ia supernova is a type of ...

Berkeley Lab astrophysicist Peter Nugent, working with Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute, used an IBM SP supercomputer at NERSC to analyze data from an exploding star that had been ...

Using the Hubble Space Telescope and an array of other instruments, astronomers have probed supernova wreckage in the Large ...

Scientists have found that a nearby two-star system contains a precursor to a Type Ia supernova, an important class of star explosions used to measure the expansion rate of the universe. The ...

When a dense stellar core called a white dwarf acquires enough material from a companion star orbiting nearby, it burns up in the nuclear fusion blast of a Type Ia supernova. This ejects freshly ...

When stars like our Sun die, they tend to go out with a whimper and not a bang — unless they happen to be part of a binary (two) star system that could give rise to a supernova explosion. Now, for the ...