As far as giant explosions in the sky go, Novas are just the starting point. Just recently scientists spotted the brightest explosion yet, which was briefly 50 times brighter than the entire Milky Way Galaxy. So do you know the different types of Novas possible?
Stars are pretty cool, metaphorically. A giant ball of fusion, our sun is 99.8% of the mass of our solar system, and about a million Earths could fit inside.
Still, on a galactic scale, our sun is fairly small. The biggest star discovered is VY Canis Majoris – a red hypergiant that is estimated to be up to 1540 times as large as our sun.
Sol is actually small enough that it won’t Nova, instead swelling up as a red giant, shedding mass, until eventually ending up as a white dwarf.
How a star ends it’s life depends on mass, with the biggest exploding, or even forming a black hole.
Read on for more info on Novas as well as black holes thanks to Space.com.
[Via Space.com – Nova, Black holes]
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