Meteorite Captured Exploding in Earth atmosphere - Video

Photographer Wes Eisenhauer has taken some pretty extraordinary footage of the night sky you’ll want to see.

While filming a timelapse of the Milky Way Galaxy on October 16, Eisenhauer captured a fireball in the sky that seemed to spontaneously explode.

This incredible phenomenon is actually known as a bolide (meaning missile in Greek), which is basically a meteorite that explodes, leaving behind a red dust trail.

But if you watch closely, after this fireball explodes, it leaves a heavenly halo in its wake-it’s definitely something you need to see to believe.

Virgin Galactic crash: last moments of SpaceShipTwo

This is the moment Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket exploded in the air during a test flight, killing one pilot and seriously injuring another.

The rocket belonging to hedonist billionaire Sir Richard Branson's space tourism venture exploded in a fireball during a test flight before crashing in the Mojave Desert in California.

A Virgin Galactic spokesman said the rocket "suffered a serious anomaly" after a test flight conducted by partner business Scaled Composites.

One eyewitness to the event, Doug Messier, managing editor of Parabolicarc.com, saw SpaceShipTwo's engine sputter when it first came to life during the test flight, after WhiteKnightTwo released it.

"It looked like the engine didn't perform properly," Messier told Space.com's Tariq Malik. "Normally it would burn and it would burn for a certain period of time. It looked like it may have started and then stopped and then started again."

Then, Messier saw the ship break apart. "I didn't see an explosion, but it definitely broke into pieces," he added.

Sir Richard wrote on Twitter: "Thoughts with all @virgingalactic & Scaled, thanks for all your messages of support. I'm flying to Mojave immediately to be with the team."

At a press conference in California, Virgin Galactic chief executive George Whitesides said: "Space is hard and today was a tough day.

"We are going to be supporting the investigation as we figure out what happened today. We are going to get through it."

"The future rests in many ways on hard days like this but we believe we owe it to the folks who were flying these vehicles as well as the folks who have been working so hard on them to understand this and to move forward."

He said it was the first time the rocket had been flown using a new fuel formulation.

"It had been proven and tested on the ground many times," he added.

Mr Whitesides said the pilots were employed by Scaled Composites. He added that the injured pilot was "as well as could be expected".

SpaceShipTwo has been under development at Mojave Air and Spaceport .

This venture was not about the advancement of science or for the benefit of humankind. This was a 'for profit' venture.

The pursuit of fame, increased revenues and bottom-line profits by Virgin's hedonistic billionaire figure-head has now led to the premature and terrifying death of one man and crippling injuries and pain of another. 

ESA Integral catches dead star exploding in a Type 1a Supernova

Astronomers studying SN2014J, a Type Ia supernova discovered in January 2014, have found proof that this type of supernova is caused by a white dwarf star reigniting and exploding.

This finding was made by using ESA’s Integral observatory to detect gamma rays from the radioactive elements created during the explosion.

This sequence of artist's impressions shows some of the steps leading up to and following the explosion.

A white dwarf, a star that contain up to 1.4 times the mass of the Sun squeezed into a volume about the same size as the Earth, leeches matter from a companion star (image 1).

The Integral measurements suggest that a belt of gas from the companion star builds up around the equator of the white dwarf (image 2). 

This belt detonates (image 3) and triggers the internal explosion that becomes the supernova (image 4). 

Material from the explosion expands (image 5) and eventually becomes transparent to gamma rays (image 6).

Astronomers using ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory have demonstrated beyond doubt that dead stars known as white dwarfs can reignite and explode as supernovae.

The finding came after the unique signature of gamma rays from the radioactive elements created in one of these explosions was captured for the first time.

The explosions in question are known as Type Ia supernovae, long suspected to be the result of a white dwarf star blowing up because of a disruptive interaction with a companion star.

However, astronomers have lacked definitive evidence that a white dwarf was involved until now.

The ‘smoking gun’ in this case was evidence for radioactive nuclei being created by fusion during the thermonuclear explosion of the white dwarf star.

“Integral has all the capabilities to detect the signature of this fusion, but we had to wait for more than ten years for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to catch a nearby supernova,” says Eugene Churazov, from the Space Research Institute (IKI) in Moscow, Russia and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics,in Garching, Germany.

Although Type Ia supernovae are expected to occur frequently across the Universe they are rare occurrences in any one galaxy, with typical rates of one every few hundred years.

3 Meteorites from 2013 Chelyabinsk Explosion Over Russia, for Sale

A fragments of the Feb. 15, 2013, Russian meteorite will hit the auction block this month.

Credit: Heritage Auctions

When a meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia on Feb. 15, 2013, many of world's most avid meteorite collectors were gathered on the other side of the world, in Arizona, at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show.

"A lot of the meteorite guys were scrambling to leave the show early to go to Russia," said Craig Kissick of Heritage Auctions.

This month, Heritage Auctions is selling three pieces of the Chelyabinsk space rock as part of its latest natural history sale.



The meteor blast produced a shockwave that shattered windows and injured more than 1,000 people in Chelyabinsk region.

Scientists who have analyzed samples of the Chelyabinsk meteorite have said it appears to be an ordinary chondrite, the most common type of meteorite found on Earth.

"I wouldn't consider it that attractive," Kissick said, but the fragments have stirred up interest among collectors because they are tied to the biggest meteorite blast in more than a century, and perhaps the most witnessed one on record.

Opening bids for the three Chelyabinsk meteorite fragments start at $500, $2,500 and $4,000. The sale will take place on Sept. 28 at Heritage Auction's Nature and Science Signature Auction in Dallas, Texas.

New improved view of supernova explosion and death throes

Three-dimensional turbulent mixing in a stratified burning oxygen shell which is four pressure scale heights deep. 

The yellow ashes of sulphur are being dredged up from the underlying orange core. 

The multi-scale structure of the turbulence is prominent. 

Entrained material is not particularly well mixed, but has features which trace the large scale advective flows in the convection zone. 

Also visible are smaller scale features, which are generated as the larger features become unstable, breaking apart to become part of the turbulent cascade. 

The white lines indicate the boundary of the computational domain. 

Credit: Arnett, Meakin and Viallet/AIP Advances

A powerful, new three-dimensional model provides fresh insight into the turbulent death throes of supernovas, whose final explosions outshine entire galaxies and populate the universe with elements that make life on Earth possible.

W. David Arnett

The model is the first to represent the start of a supernova collapse in three dimensions, said its developer, W. David Arnett, Regents Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Arizona, who developed the model with Casey Meakin and Nathan Smith at Arizona and Maxime Viallet of the Max-Planck Institut fur Astrophysik.

Described in the journal AIP Advances, it shows how the turbulent mixing of elements inside stars causes them to expand, contract, and spit out matter before they finally detonate.

Arnett, a pioneer in building models of physical processes inside stars, traces his fascination with turbulence to 1987A, the first supernova of 1987.

Located in a nearby galaxy, it was bright enough to see with the naked eye.

The star puzzled astronomers, Arnett recalled, because the material ejected by its explosion appeared to mix with material previously ejected from the star.

Existing models could not explain that. "Instead of going gently into that dark night, it is fighting. It is sputtering and spitting off material. This can take a year or two. There are small precursor events, several peaks, and then the big explosion.

"Perhaps what we need is a more sophisticated notion of what an explosion is, to explain what we are seeing," Arnett concludes.

More information: The article, "Chaos and turbulent nucleosynthesis prior to a supernova explosion" by David Arnett, Casey Meakin and Maxime Viallet appears in the journal AIP Advances (DOI: 10.1063/1.4867384). 

The article will be published online on March 18, 2014. dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4867384

Nearest supernova in 27 years explodes in M82 galaxy

Credit: UCL/University of London Observatory/Steve Fossey/Ben Cooke/Guy Pollack/Matthew Wilde/Thomas Wright

A supernova has been spotted in the constellation Ursa Major (between the Big and Little Dipper in the night sky) in the M82 galaxy (affectionately known as the cigar galaxy) by a team of students at University College London.

The discovery was posted on the (CBAT) Central Bureau's Transient Object Confirmation Page which led to follow-up observations by other teams around the world.

It's real, and not only is it bright enough for amateur astronomer's to view, but it's the closet known supernova explosion since 1987.

Initial study has revealed the supernova to be classified as 1a, the type described by astronomers as "standard candles" because their brightness is uniform enough to allow for using them to measure distances across the universe.

Sometimes they start out as a white dwarf, pulling in material from around them until they reach a critical mass and explode. Other times they are the result of two such stars (binaries) colliding.

What's perhaps most exciting about this newest observation is that it's so close (just 11.4 million light years from us) that it's likely that images of the star that exploded have been previously recorded by different telescopes around the globe which means scientists might be able to watch the process that led to the supernova occurring, something that has never been seen before.

If that turns out to be the case, other space researchers note, the stage could be set for allowing for reducing uncertainties in measuring dark energy—standard candle observations are the means by which such theories first came to exist after all.

Also, while the explosion has undoubtedly unleashed a torrent of neutrinos, its unlikely monitors here on Earth will notice much of an uptic in activity due to distance and them getting lost in other sources.

Because of the timing of the discovery, it appears that there is more to come—it's going to get brighter over the next few days before growing dimmer and dimmer, eventually fading to black.

That means that anyone wishing to observe a supernova as its happening can do so—likely a once in a lifetime opportunity. Binoculars should be enough, though a telescope would be much better.

Universe Today has published a map to help those looking find it.

More information: www.astronomerstelegram.org/ remanzacco.blogspot.nl/2014/

GRB Explosion illuminates invisible galaxy in the dark ages

Before light from the gamma-ray burst arrives at the Earth for astronomers to study, it passes through interstellar gas in its host galaxy (close-up view, left), and intergalactic gas between the distant galaxy and us (wide view, right).

This gas filters the light by absorbing some colors and leaves a signature on the light that can be seen in its spectrum.

This "signature" allows scientists to characterize the gamma-ray burst, its environment, and the material between us and the distant galaxy.

Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA, artwork by Lynette Cook

More than 12 billion years ago a star exploded, ripping itself apart and blasting its remains outward in twin jets at nearly the speed of light. At its death it glowed so brightly that it outshone its entire galaxy by a million times.

This brilliant flash traveled across space for 12.7 billion years to a planet that hadn't even existed at the time of the explosion - our Earth.

By analyzing this light, astronomers learned about a galaxy that was otherwise too small, faint and far away for even the Hubble Space Telescope to see.

Ryan Chornock

"This star lived at a very interesting time, the so-called dark ages just a billion years after the Big Bang," says lead author Ryan Chornock of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

"In a sense, we're forensic scientists investigating the death of a star and the life of a galaxy in the earliest phases of cosmic time," he adds.

The star announced its death with a flash of gamma rays, an event known as a gamma-ray burst (GRB).

GRB 130606A was classified as a long GRB since the burst lasted for more than four minutes.

It was detected by NASA's Swift spacecraft on June 6th. Chornock and his team quickly organized follow-up observations by the MMT Telescope in Arizona and the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii.

"We were able to get right on target in a matter of hours," Chornock says. "That speed was crucial in detecting and studying the afterglow."

A GRB afterglow occurs when jets from the burst slam into surrounding gas, sweeping that material up like a snowplow, heating it, and causing it to glow.

As the afterglow's light travels through the dead star's host galaxy, it passes through clouds of interstellar gas.

Chemical elements within those clouds absorb light at certain wavelengths, leaving "fingerprints." By splitting the light into a rainbow spectrum, astronomers can study those fingerprints and learn what gases the distant galaxy contained.

All chemical elements heavier than hydrogen, helium, and lithium had to be created by stars.

As a result those heavy elements, which astronomers collectively call "metals," took time to accumulate. Life could not have existed in the early universe because the elements of life, including carbon and oxygen, did not exist.

Chornock and his colleagues found that the GRB galaxy contained only about one-tenth of the metals in our solar system. Theory suggests that although rocky planets might have been able to form, life probably could not thrive yet.

"At the time this star died, the universe was still getting ready for life. It didn't have life yet, but was building the required elements," says Chornock.

At a redshift of 5.9, or a distance of 12.7 billion light-years, GRB 130606A is one of the most distant gamma-ray bursts ever found.

"In the future we will be able to find and exploit even more distant GRBs with the planned Giant Magellan Telescope," says Edo Berger of the CfA, a co-author on the publication.

Russian Proton rocket explosion: Upside down sensor to blame

An investigation into the failure of a Proton-M booster rocket carrying three GLONASS navigation satellites that exploded moments after launch suggests a wrongly placed sensor was to blame.

The deputy head of Russia's space agency Roskosmos Aleksandr Lopatin says, "The failure occurred due to loss of stabilization and fishtailing due to abnormal functioning of an angular velocity sensor." He added that it had probably been installed upside down.

On July 2 the Proton-M rocket blasted off from launch pad 81 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and blew up almost immediately.

The rocket had stabilization problems and fail-safe mechanisms kicked in which sent the space vehicle loaded with hundreds of tons of highly toxic fuel away from the launch pad.

The rocket turned upside down, burst in flames and broke into burning pieces, which fell on the ground with an explosion. No one was injured, and there was no damage reported to the launch site.

The loss of the booster and three GLONASS satellites is estimated of 4.4 billion roubles (about $137 million). Roskosmos says it will revise rocket booster production with compulsory photo and video recording of every operation performed.

"We actually do photo and video record every [rocket booster] production stage. But unfortunately installation of the angular velocity sensor was not recorded," Aleksandr Lopatin told journalists. He revealed that the faulty sensor was installed on November 16, 2011.

The Deputy head of Roskosmos revealed that three of the six angular velocity sensor sensors on the Proton-M that crashed were installed upside down.

All Proton boosters already produced are going to be double-checked and all personnel involved in rocket assembling are being retrained.

"Comprehensive inspection is underway," reported Lopatin, adding that so far there are four boosters ready. Two of them remain at the Khrunichev space center while another two have already been delivered to Baikonur Cosmodrome. Inspection has found no problems with sensors installed on the Protons delivered to Baikonur.

NASA SDO: Solar dynamic loops - simultaneous explosion and implosion

Image from NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) at 17.7 nanometres showing the flaring active region on 9 March 2012. The coronal loops that contract during the flare are indicated by the labels L1 to L4, outer to inner. 

Credit: NASA/ SDO/ University of Glasgow.

Movies of giant loops projecting from the surface of the Sun are giving new insights into the complex mechanisms that drive solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).

These eruptions release vast energy and electrically charged particles that can affect the Earth through space weather.

Imagery from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), used in two separate studies, shows the dynamics of loops before, during and after eruptions.

Results have been presented at the National Astronomy Meeting in St Andrews.

Coronal loops are giant magnetic arches filled with hot plasma at temperatures of over a million degrees Celsius.

The structures are anchored in the dense photosphere, the visible surface of the Sun. The loops form the building blocks of the corona, the halo surrounding the Sun that can be seen during a total eclipse.

They are dynamic structures that oscillate back and forth after explosive events such as solar flares.

Researchers from the University of Glasgow observed four groups of loops that contracted rapidly during a flare on 9 March 2012.

The loops had a 'staggered start' to their collapse, showing delays of 60–80 seconds from the inner to the outer loops.

"This event is a great example of a simultaneous implosion and explosion," said Dr Paulo Simões.

"Our interpretation is that energy is transferred from the magnetic field to power the flare, leaving a pocket of reduced magnetic support that causes an implosion.

The staggering between the loop contractions is caused by the time delay needed for the 'information' about the loss of support to travel outwards."

More information: R.S. White, E. Verwichte & C. Foullon, First observation of a transverse vertical oscillation during the formation of a hot post flare loop, A&A, 545, A129 (2012)

Hubble Telescope Captures huge explosion on Faraway Star, T Pyxidis

Double-star system T Pyxidis seen on Sept. 19, 2011.

CREDIT: NASA, ESA, A. Crotts, J. Sokoloski, and H. Uthas (Columbia University), and S. Lawrence (Hofstra University)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers a rare look at an enormous stellar eruption, allowing them to map out the aftermath of such blasts in unprecedented detail.

Hubble photographed an April 2011 explosion in the double-star system T Pyxidis (T Pyx for short), which goes off every 12 to 50 years.

The new images reveal that material ejected by previous T Pyx outbursts did not escape into space, instead sticking around to form a debris disk about 1 light-year wide around the system.

This information came as a surprise to the research team.

"We fully expected this to be a spherical shell," study co-author Arlin Crotts of Columbia University said in a statement.

"This observation shows it is a disk, and it is populated with fast-moving ejecta from previous outbursts."

Hubble observes Supernova explosion of Yellow Supergiant

M51 Galaxy before (left) and after (right) the eruption of SN 2011dh. 

The image on the left was taken in 2009, and on the right on July 8th, 2011. 

Credit: Conrad Jung.

Observational results of the Hubble Space Telescope announced in March 2013 confirmed the theoretical prediction by the Bersten team at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe that the yellow supergiant star found at the location of supernova SN 2011dh in the famous nearby galaxy M51 was indeed the star that exploded.

The nature of the progenitor star (or progenitor system) of core-collapse supernovae and the origin of their diversity are important open questions in the field of astrophysics.

It has been believed that most massive stars explode when they become red supergiants, or, alternatively, blue compact stars (Wolf-Rayet stars).

The supernova SN 2011dh that appeared in the M51 galaxy revealed a different story.

Two groups of astronomers independently detected a yellow supergiant (YSG) star at a location closely matching that of the supernova in archival images obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) before the supernova explosion.

A question then arose as to how such a star could undergo a supernova explosion. The YSG phase is an intermediate, short-lived stage in the evolutionary models of single stars, during which no supernova explosions are expected to occur.

With the explosion of the YSG star confirmed, there is one last piece of the puzzle that still needs to be proved: the existence of the companion star predicted by the binary model.

According to the calculations, at the moment of the supernova explosion, the companion should be a massive, blue star.

Because of its high surface temperature, this star should emit mostly in the ultraviolet range, with a negligible contribution to the total flux of the system in the optical range.

The companion was faint enough not to be detected in the pre-supernova images of the space telescope but in the near future, as the supernova continues to fade, the relatively faint companion star can be recovered.

A team at the Kavli IPMU (Folattelli et al.) has thus proposed to perform deep observations with the HST and the Keck & Subaru telescope in 2014 to provide a definitive test for the validity of their models.

Reference:
"The Type IIb Supernova 2011dh from a Supergiant Progenitor," Melina C. Bersten, Omar G. Benvenuto, Ken'ichi Nomoto et al. 2012 ApJ 757 31 doi:10.1088/0004-637X/757/1/31

Russian Meteor Explosion Not Caused by Asteroid Flyby

What appears to be a meteor trail over eastern Russia is seen in this image released Feb. 15, 2013, by the Russian Emergency Ministry. The meteor fall included a massive blast, according to Russian reports.

CREDIT: Russian Emergency Ministry

The meteor explosion over Russia that injured more than 500 people and damaged hundreds of buildings was not caused by an asteroid zooming close by the Earth today (Feb.15), a NASA scientist afirms.

NASA asteroid expert Don Yeomans, head of the agency's Near-Earth Object Program Office, said that the object which exploded over a thinly inhabited stretch of eastern Europe today was most likely an exploding fireball known as a Bolide or Meteoroid.

More than 500 people were reported injured, mostly by glass cuts when windows shattered during the blast, according to the Russian Emergency Ministry.

"If the reports of ground damage can be verified, it might suggest an object whose original size was several meters in extent before entering the atmosphere, fragmenting and exploding due to the unequal pressure on the leading side vs the trailing side (it pancaked and exploded)," Yeomans reported.

"It is far too early to provide estimates of the energy released or provide a reliable estimate of the original size."

Yeoman stressed that the bolide event was likely not associated at all with the incoming asteroid 2012 DA14, which will fly within 17,200 miles (27,000 kilometers) of Earth when it passes safely by our planet today.

"The asteroid will travel south to north," Yeomans said. "The bolide trail was not south to north and the separation in time between the fireball and 2012 DA14 close approach is significant."

Large, Fast and Rare Meteorite hits the Earth

Geology professor Qing-zhu Yin holds a fragment of the Sutter Mill meteorite that exploded over the Sierra foothills this past spring. (Gregory Urquiaga/UC Davis photo).

A meteorite that exploded as a fireball over California's Sierra foothills this past spring was among the fastest, rarest meteorites known to have hit the Earth, and it traveled a highly eccentric orbital route to get here.

An international team of scientists presents these and other findings in a study published Friday, Dec. 21, in the journal Science.

The 70-member team included nine researchers from UC Davis, along with scientists from the SETI Institute, NASA and other institutions.

The researchers found that the meteorite that fell over Northern California on April 22 was the rarest type known to have hit the Earth - a carbonaceous chondrite. It is composed of cosmic dust and presolar materials that helped form the planets of the solar system.

The scientists learned that the meteorite formed about 4.5 billion years ago was knocked off its parent body, which may have been an asteroid or a Jupiter-family comet, roughly 50,000 years ago.

Once it left the comet, it began its journey to Earth and exploded over Sutter's Mill, the gold discovery site that sparked the California Gold Rush.

As it flew toward Earth, it traveled an eccentric course through the solar system, flying from an orbit close to Jupiter toward the sun, passing by Mercury and Venus, and then flying out to hit Earth.

The high-speed, minivan-sized meteorite entered the atmosphere at about 64,000 miles per hour.

The study said it was the fastest, "most energetic" reported meteorite that's fallen since 2008, when an asteroid fell over Sudan.

"If this were a much bigger object and had landed in a more populated area, then this could have been a disaster," said co-author and UC Davis geology professor Qing-zhu Yin. "But, in this case, it is a happy."

Before entering Earth's atmosphere, the meteorite is estimated to have weighed roughly 100,000 pounds but most of that mass burned away when the meteorite exploded. Scientists and private collectors have recovered about 2 pounds remaining.

A fine ribbon of gas floating through the Milky Way

The delicate remains of a violent act: this is a fine ribbon of gas floating through the Milky Way, likely left over from a supernova explosion a millennium ago.

Its scientific significance is minimal—but that doesn't mean it's not beautiful.

NASA’s Morpheus: Prototype Green Lander Explodes During Testing

The first freeflight of Nasa JSC's Morpheus LOX-Methane vertical takeoff, vertical landing rocket vehicle. It appears to have had a guidance failure. The heat of the methane burning then burst a LOX tank.

The lander flew a short distance before spinning head over tail and plummeting to the ground, where it burst into flame and exploded after about half a minute.

No one was injured during the testing of the lander, nicknamed ‘Morpheus’ after the Greek god of dreams.

The test would have marked the first solo flight of the 10-ft-long, 2,300 lb prototype.

NASA's Morpheus “was testing an engine that burned liquid oxygen and liquid methane, a technology NASA believed could benefit future landing or in-space propulsion systems.”

According to Jon Olansen, Morpheus’ project manager, the destruction of the craft, estimated to have cost about $500,000 was almost complete.

While the memory devices that could give a clue to what went wrong were successfully salvaged, in Olansen’s words, “The vehicle itself is lost.”

The team hopes to be able to gather enough data from the craft’s demise to be able to discover what went wrong during the test and fix it in any subsequent prototypes.

“We want to make sure that what we learn today gets applied to that next vehicle,” Olansen

NASA released a statement saying that failure is “part of the development process” and that they are confident the team will discover what’s wrong and fix the issue.

Vela Supernova Remnant

Vela Supernova Remnant by Marco Lorenzi (Italy). 

The intricate structure of the aftermath of a supernova explosion - the violent death of a star many times more massive than the Sun which took place over 10,000 years ago.

Seen against stars and gas in the disc of our Milky Way, this expanding shell of debris and heated gas now covers an area of the sky which is twenty times bigger than the disc of the full Moon.

Picture: Marco Lorenzi

Chandra X-Ray Observatory Image: Tycho supernova remnant

Looking like a bunch of flowers, this image comes from a very deep Chandra observation of the Tycho supernova remnant in the Milky Way.

It is produced by the supernova explosion of a white dwarf star in our home galaxy.

Low-energy X-rays (red) show expanding debris from the supernova explosion and high energy X-rays (blue) show the blast wave, a shell of extremely energetic electrons.

These high-energy X-rays show a pattern of X-ray "stripes" never seen in a supernova remnant.

Some of the brightest stripes can be seen on the right side of the remnant pointing from the outer rim to the interior.

These stripes may provide the first evidence that supernova remnants can accelerate particles to energies a hundred times higher than achieved by the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth, the Large Hadron Collider.

The results could explain how some of the extremely energetic particles bombarding the Earth, called cosmic rays, are produced. Tycho is named after a Danish astronomer who first observed it in 1572.

Picture: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/K.Eriksen / Rex Features

JAXA Ikaros Space Sail craft detects massive explosion

The GAmma-ray burst Polarized light detector on the backside of Japan's Ikaros solar sail is shown here. The instrument spotted its first gamma-ray burst on July 7, 2010. Credit: JAXA.

A camera riding on the world's first deep space solar sail has caught managed to observe a violent gamma-ray burst — one of the most powerful explosions in the universe, Japanese space officials have announced.

The Ikaros solar sail detected the first gamma-ray burst with its onboard GAmma-ray burst Polarized light detector (GAP) on July 7, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said in an announcement.
Gamma-ray bursts are the dying explosion of large stars that have run out of fuel. The collapsing star cores can form either black holes or neutron stars, and emit an intense burst of high-energy gamma-rays.

These gamma-ray bursts, as they're called, are some of the brightest explosions in space. One gamma-ray burst, which was observed by NASA's Swift satellite June 21, was so powerful and bright that it temporarily blinded the space observatory, NASA officials said.

Satellites in space routinely keep watch for powerful gamma-ray bursts, but the GAP instrument on Ikaros is designed to make the first-ever detection of polarized light from the cosmic explosions.

"Polarized light observations will contribute to elucidate the magnetic structure and the radiation mechanism of gamma-ray bursts, thus they are expected to greatly help solve the mystery of the death of massive stars and the birth of black holes," JAXA officials said.

The GAP can detect gamma-rays coming toward Ikaros from all directions, but can only carry out its polarized light analysis when the gamma-rays come in from the backside of the solar sail. The first gamma-ray burst detected did not allow for such an analysis.

Japan's Ikaros solar sail has months of sailing ahead, and scientists calculate that about 20 percent of gamma-ray bursts observed by GAP should allow for polarized light observations.