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Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: Competing Theories Proposed for Superbright Supernova


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An x-ray image taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals supernova 2006gy (left) shining as bright as the nucleus of its galaxy.

This puzzling brilliance has led scientists to propose two unusual formation mechanisms: a collision between two massive stars or a single, repeatedly exploding star.

Image courtesy NASA/CXC/UC Berkeley/N.Smith et al.