Starry Night
Cosmic firework!
The Christmas burst van Gogh might have painted.
The Christmas sky last year was lit up by an extraordinarily powerful and mysteriously long-lasting explosion in space that scientists now suggest was a comet smacking into a dense star or a peculiar supernova death. Thöne and her colleagues say an oddball supernova might be to blame. They propose that the Christmas explosion occurred when a neutron star combined with a helium star, a type of super-giant star rich in helium. When the neutron star and the helium star's core merged, the result would have been a black hole or a highly magnetic neutron star known as a magnetar, either of which might power long bursts of radiation.
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