NASA offers insight on supernova that may have been alluded to in ‘Hamlet

Last Updated05/03/2023

Recently, a team of researchers has unveiled new light on the explosion of a star in a supernova which occurred more than 450 years ago by using Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer.
The explosion of a supernova which was named Tycho was visible to people on Earth in 1572, and the shock wave from the blast is still propagating through the cosmos.

IXPE is an international collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency.
It studies the most extreme and mysterious objects in the universe – supernova remnants, supermassive black holes, and dozens of other high-energy objects.
It is the first satellite dedicated to measuring polarized X-rays from objects, such as neutron stars and supermassive black holes, to reveal previously hidden details of the universe.

The Tycho supernova is classified as a Type Ia supernova, which occurs when a white dwarf star in a binary system shreds its companion star, capturing some of its mass and triggering an explosion.
Tycho released as much energy as the Sunwould emit over ten billion years and blasted particles out into space near the speed of light.
Researchers used IXPE to reveal the magnetic field geometry close to Tycho’s shock wave to investigate further how particles are accelerated there.