A researcher at Virginia Tech began using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to collect data on the presence of manganese, chromium, cobalt and nickel in exploding dying stars or supernovae.
A researcher at Virginia Tech College of Science’s Department of Physics began using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to collect data on the presence of heavy elements in exploding dying stars, or supernovae.
Supernovae are one of the highest-temperature and highest-density places in the universe. The material in stars burns and burns to form heavier and heavier elements, from hydrogen to helium, helium to carbon, carbon to oxygen, and so forth, all the way through the Periodic Table to iron. Ashall will use the telescope to collect imaging and spectroscopy data on elements inside SN2021aefx. Spectroscopy involves looking at spectra produced by a material when it interacts with or emits light by breaking the light into its component colours, per NASA.
Core-collapse supernovae are massive dying stars more than eight times the mass of our sun. When these stars die, they collapse in on themselves and make an explosion more than 100 billion times brighter than the sun.