Hubble Telescope Records RARE Kilonova Explosion! | REAL IMAGES

 

In one of our recent articles we talked about how a collision between two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole could be catastrophic for the entire universe such an event is called a kilonova or a macro nova or sometimes an r process supernova in 2013 Hubble telescope revealed a new type of stellar explosion produced by the merger of two compact objects which were discerned to be either two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole this was perhaps the first time we clearly saw the cosmic objects colliding in a gamma-ray burst but the first kilonova was quite possibly observed in 2008 welcome the fact nominal and let's look at all the images that nasa's Hubble telescope has managed to capture of kilonovas the images taken by nasa's Hubble space telescope revealed a new type of stellar explosion produced by the merger of two compact objects it was either two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole the galaxy in the center of the left image produced the gamma-ray burst whose lingering effects were visible on June 13th but had faded by July 3. nasa scientists called the new type of short but intense cosmic collision and conflagration a kilonova that's an explosion so powerful it is one 000 times stronger than a typical star explosion called anova the discovery possibly shed light on the origin of heavy elements such as gold and platinum the wide view of the gamma-ray burst 130603b showed its host galaxy and the surrounding area and they are nearly 4 billion light years away from the earth the image shows at least two more adjacent galaxies making the space gate look as magnificent as curiosity inducing it is however the next pair of the image

 shows the galaxy in a close-up

 focusing on it exclusively also displaying it before and after the explosion

 gamma-ray bursts are the most intense outbursts ever detected giving off as much energy in an instant as our sun will beam out during its entire 10 billion year lifetime there are two kinds of gamma-ray bursts ones that are longer lived lasting more than two seconds and less common short-lived ones lasting about 2 seconds or less nasa's swift satellite measured grb130603b as 0.18 seconds long while nasa's wind spacecraft determined that it lasted only 0.09 seconds nasa's Hubble space telescope revealed that the near infrared afterglow that accompanied grb130603b was the kind one would expect from a kilonova this is smoking gun evidence that an explosive merger caused the gamma-ray burst however according to nasa scientists the evidence wasn't enough citing that they will have to search and study more about kilonovas to be completely sure but the 2013 images sure promised

 a lot about the kilonova process

 on 17 august 2017 the laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory LIGO and the virgo interferometer both

 alerted astronomical observers

 all over the globe about the detection of a gravitational wave event named gw170817 about two seconds after the detection of the gravitational wave esa's integral telescope and nasa's fermi gamma-ray space telescope observed a short gamma ray burst in the same direction in the night following the initial discovery a fleet of telescopes commenced their hunt to find the source of this particular event astronomers located it in the lenticular galaxy NGC 4993 that is about 130 million light years away a point of light was shining where nothing was visible before and this set off one of the largest multi-telescopes observing campaigns ever but of course the nasa ESA Hubble space telescope was among these telescopes as well several different teams of scientists used Hubble over the two weeks following the gravitational wave event alert to observe NGC 4993 praised the hubble's high resolution imaging capabilities they managed to get the first observational proof of a kilonova hubble captured images of the galaxy invisible and infrared light witnessing a new bright object within ngc 4993 that was brighter than a nova but fainter than a supernova the images you are reading now displayed that the object faded noticeably over the next six days of the Hubble observations using Hubble's spectroscopic capabilities the teams also found indications of material being ejected by the kilonova as fast

 as one-fifth of the speed of light

 in may 2020 a team of scientists observed what is potentially the brightest kilonova detected so far this one was associated with a short

 gamma-ray burst labeled grb200522a

 Hubble space telescope observation showed that the radiation from this distant cosmological event didn't fit the profile scientists had come to expect from typical kilonova according to the paper published on the observed event the infrared light associated with grb200522a was significantly more luminous than any kilonova candidate for which comparable observations exist the team was assigned to collect and combine observations from the Hubble the very large array the las cumbres observatory global telescope and the wm keck observatory was led by wen phi fong she stated that Hubble was the deciding factor as it was the only telescope to detect infrared light amazingly Hubble was able to take an image only three days after the burst Hubble's spectacular resolution was also key in quantifying the amount of light coming from the merger the Hubble observations were designed to search for infrared emissions that resulted from the creation of heavy elements like gold platinum and uranium during a neutron star collision to the team's surprise they found a much brighter infrared emission than anything anybody had expected the reading indicated that there was an additional energy input from perhaps a magnetar magnetars are neutron stars that have

 an insanely super strong magnetic field clearly this magnetar was the remnant of the observed merger according to a co-author on the team the kilonova discovered in 2020 outshines the one discovered in 2017 by miles it was astounding for the team because most of them had been studying this phenomenon for more than 10 years and yet the very first one they discovered left them feeling like they know very little this information made grb200522a different from all other potential kilinovae because given what scientists know about the radio and x-ray emissions from this particular blast numbers were not matching up hubble's read on the infrared emissions was over the roof with brightness simply there was a piece in this puzzle that didn't mean to go with the rest of the picture according to Fong these observations do not fit traditional explanations for short gamma-ray bursts in order to understand the exact levels of brightness and the distance of the origin the team used WM Keck observatory on Mauna kea in Hawaii in such cases distances are important in calculating the burst's true brightness as opposed to its apparent brightness as seen from earth it is kind of similar to how the brightness of a light bulb depends on both its luminosity and its distance from the eye for how

 much time it will take to reach it

 a gamma ray burst could be really bright because either it is intrinsically luminous and distant or not as luminous but much closer to the earth thanks to the Keck observatory the team was able to determine the true brightness of the burst and thus the energy scale they found that this kilonova was much more energetic than they originally determined the biggest mystery that is intriguing scientists fraternity is what is left behind in such a collision could it be a more massive neutron star or perhaps a newborn black hole the fact that we see this infrared emission and that it is so bright shows that short gamma-ray bursts indeed form from neutron star collisions but surprisingly the aftermath of the collision may not be a black hole but rather likely a magnetar however unlike 2017 this kilonova didn't give us a splash of gravity waves so the magnetar theory definitely needs more evidence a magnetar is part of the neutron star family as it is an ultra dense star with a magnetic field stronger than earth's by a trillion times magnetars are sadly short-lived well at least by cosmic standards with an age of perhaps 10,000 years only that could be very well defined as ephemeral when it comes to star life spans but they are probably the best source of fast radio bursts aka FRBs hopefully follow-up observations in radio a few years down the line we'll be able to confirm whether there is indeed a magnetar behind this unexpectedly bright observation and with James Webb telescope's launch things are going to be way brighter in the future for space exploration tell us in the comments how excited you are for the Webb telescope and the human presence in space and once again thanks for reading Science Reads