Shedding Light on 2019yvr - the Yellow Supernova - The Cosmic Companion May 9, 2021
An unusual supernova appears to have exploded without the usual shell of hydrogen that normally accompanies such events. What happened?
2019yvr, an odd yellow supernova, shows what a hydrogen-poor supernova can do.
As they near the end of their lives, cool yellow stars are typically enshrouded in hydrogen, concealing their hotter, blue, interiors.
However, one yellow star found 35 million light years from Earth, 2019yvr, experienced a supernova explosion without such a layer of hydrogen.
“If a star explodes without hydrogen, it should be extremely blue — really, really hot. It’s almost impossible for a star to be this cool without having hydrogen in its outer layer. We looked at every single stellar model that could explain a star like this, and every single model requires that the star had hydrogen, which, from its supernova, we know it did not. It stretches what’s physically possible,” explains Charles Kilpatrick, postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA).
Read more: https://thecosmiccompanion.net/shedding-light-on-2019yvr-the-yellow-supernova
Check out the amazing lineup of guests coming up on Astronomy News with The Cosmic Companion!
May 11 (s4/e19): Dr. Jack Hughes, astrophysicist at Rutgers University, discussing new findings about supernovae.
May 18 (s4/e20): NASA’s Scott Lambros, Instrument Systems Manager for the James Webb Space Telescope, tells us about this remarkable observatory.
May 25 (s4/e21): The Interstellar probe – exploring space between the stars with Dr. Elena Provornikova from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
June 1 (s4/e22): ~just added~ Using computer modeling to peer inside the atmosphere of Saturn with Dr. Sabine Stanley of Johns Hopkins University.
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