Explosions in Space: The Supernova Quiz

A supernova occurs when a star reaches the end of its life and explodes. According to NASA, the largest known explosions in space are from supernovae.

The final fate of a star depends on its size. Many stars simply run out of fuel and cool down over the millennia; a few extremely large stars may go on to form black holes.

Johannes Kepler, an astronomer for whom the Kepler satellite is named, recorded a supernova in 1604. Since then, NASA discovered evidence of a supernova that occurred a century ago, but it was not noted on Earth at the time.

Type I supernovae come from binary star systems in which one star takes matter from a neighboring star. Once it grows too large, it explodes. Subcategories of Type I are Ia, Ib and Ic.

A Type II supernova is the natural death of a star. Over time, the star's mass migrates into its core, causing the star to collapse and explode.

Many important elements - like helium, hydrogen and carbon - are formed during the fusion reactions of stars. When the stars explode, these elements are shot off to the rest of the universe, allowing new stars and planets to form.

You don't need any additional instrumentation to find a supernova - while a telescope certainly helps, all you need to see many supernovae is a pair of eyes!

NASA frequently uses a combination of evidence to detect supernovae, including visible light, x-rays and gamma rays. All three are products of the explosion!

The Chandrasekhar limit, discovered by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, is the point at which a star will begin to collapse because of its mass. Stars that reach the Chandrasekhar limit will become a Type II supernova.

Fortunately for Earth, our sun will not explode. Unfortunately for Earth, it will expand into a red giant and engulf the planet in flames. Later, it will cool down and become a white dwarf.

Since the black hole would have the same mass as the current sun, its gravitational pull would be about the same and the Earth would remain in orbit. While the planet itself would survive, saying that life on Earth would be jeopardized would be an understatement.

An incredibly dense mass from the center of the star remains after the explosion. The new star may release a steady stream of x-ray radiation, which helps scientists detect it.

Neutron stars are super dense because they're made up of neutrons (the uncharged particles of atoms) that have been tightly packed together. That means their constituent part is significantly smaller than an atom!

Estimates vary, from some as low as 40 million tons up to 12 billion tons. In any case, neutron stars are so dense that their gravitational field is about two billion times greater than Earth's gravity.

The collision would almost instantly form a black hole, given the enormous gravity that each star already produces. The whole process would only take seconds.

A magnetar has the most powerful magnetic field in the known universe. The field is so strong that it could actually deform an atom!

A hypernova is essentially a supernova, but with a much greater release of energy. Some hypernovae release deadly gamma radiation.

A nova is less permanent than a supernova: it's caused by an explosion on the white dwarf as it strips matter from a neighboring star. One star can have many novas, but only one supernova.

There's nothing brighter than a supernova except a hypernova, the supernova's higher-energy variant. When a hypernova occurs, it's the brightest light in the galaxy.

Researcher Alicia Soderberg was startled by the occurrence; she and her team were not expecting the massive X-ray readings picked up by their instruments! The supernova was named SN 2008D.

Given some strange data recorded during the event, a popular theory in the scientific community is that the star collapsed into a black hole after exploding. Other researchers think it was just an exceptionally powerful supernova.

A neutron star becomes a pulsar under specific conditions, with the right mix of magnetic field and spin frequency. Slow pulsars rotate about once per second, while some rotate up to 700 times per second.

Pulsars rotate quickly, like beams from a lighthouse, and send a stream of X-rays in the direction of the neutron star's axis. If that jet stream faces toward Earth, scientists can pinpoint the pulsar's location.

"Super" means "above" or "over," while "nova" means "new." The name is appropriate, since it describes the death of the old and the birth of the new.

A Chinese astronomer recorded a "new star" or "guest star" that hung in the sky, then disappeared after roughly eight months. Scientists believe the star exploded a mere two thousand years ago.

The supernova observed on Earth in 1006 AD would have released enough light for ancient citizens to pull out their tomes in the evening. It was the brightest recorded supernova visible from Earth.

The time it takes for a supernova's light to reach Earth is governed by the distance the star is from Earth. It usually takes many light-years for the explosion to become visible to us.

The gas and stardust remaining from the explosion form a new nebula. Beautiful color images of nebulae have been captured by the Hubble telescope.

Formed about eight thousand years ago, the Veil nebula adorns Cygnus, the "swan" constellation. It is about 1,500 light-years from Earth.

Most nebulae, if bright, are lit from neighboring stars. Some nebulae are also brightened by the light stars inside them!

Sound has no medium through which to travel in space, so you wouldn't hear an explosion if you witnessed a supernova!

The nebula, which contains leftover material from other stars and explosions, can eventually form a protostar if those materials knot up and condense. The prefix "proto-" means first, or earliest stage of, as in "prototype."

A protostar is the early stage of star formation. If it can gain enough mass, gravity will attract more matter and heat up the core.

One protostar can split to form several stars, which explains why many stars have nearby neighbors.

While we couldn't rule out or confirm a multi-star collision as the cause of the supernova, we can say that a supernova probably caused our solar system to form when its shock waves penetrated a nearby nebula.