London, Dec 15 (ANI): The supernova that exploded in August-dubbed the supernova of a generation-was a "white dwarf" star, an international team of scientists has revealed.
The team including astrophysicists from UC Santa Barbara also rules out possibility that its companion star could have been a "red giant," as previously suspected.
White dwarf stars are small but very dense stars, and red giants are stars that swell to massive proportions when they approach middle age.
The new "type Ia" thermonuclear supernova, known as PTF 11kly, exploded on August 24th in the Pinwheel galaxy, located in the "Big Dipper," also known as Ursa Major.
Over the past 50 years, astrophysicists have discovered that type Ia supernovae are part of binary systems-two stars orbiting each other. The one that exploded was theorized to be a white dwarf star.
The scientists are upbeat about the finding that the supernova is a white dwarf.
"It's been nearly 50 years since the original theoretical suggestions were made that these supernovae were caused by white dwarfs," said co-author Lars Bildsten, a permanent member of UCSB's Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics
"The observational proof is very satisfying to see!" Bildsten noted.
Scientists have not yet ascertained the type of the companion star to the white-dwarf-turned supernova.
However, they have ruled out the type of star they expected-a red giant.
"This is the first time through direct imaging of the explosion site, we were able to rule out certain types of stars as the companion to a Type Ia supernova. The second star couldn't have been a massive red giant," Weidong Li, a research scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.
The findings are published in the journal Nature. (ANI)
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