Astronomers have observed in a relatively nearby galaxy a star that not only survived what ordinarily should have been certain death - a stellar explosion called a supernova - but emerged from it brighter than before the blast. Meet the "zombie star." The star at issue, observed with the Hubble Space Telescope, is a kind known as a white dwarf, an incredibly dense object with about the mass of the sun crammed into the size of Earth. A white dwarf is the remaining core of a star that blew off a lot of its material at the end of its life cycle, as our sun is expected to do about 5 billion years from now. A 2005 image of the spiral galaxy NGC 1309, the location of a star explosion – a supernova - that did not result in stellar death. NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team (STSCI/AURA),...
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