Cosmoview Episode 71: Never-Before-Seen Way to Annihilate a Star

This artist's impression illustrates how astronomers studying a powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB) with the Gemini South telescope, operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, may have detected a never-before-seen way to destroy a star. Unlike most GRBs, which are caused by exploding massive stars or the chance mergers of neutron stars, astronomers have concluded that this GRB came instead from the collision of stars or stellar remnants in the jam-packed environment surrounding a supermassive black hole at the core of an ancient galaxy.

Credit:

International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, M. Garlick, M. Zamani, K. O Chul, ESO/L. Calçada, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab, N. Bartmann

Music: Stellardrone - Airglow

About the Video

Id:noirlab2319a
Release date:June 22, 2023, 8 a.m.
Related releases:noirlab2319
Duration:01 m 12 s
Frame rate:29.97

About the Object

Category:Galaxies

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