Hubble spots mysterious exploding star
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.028815
Nature : A mysterious stellar outburst has been captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Images taken in January and August 2014 reveal what appears to be an exploding star in the constellation Eridanus. The explosion’s brightness was 100 times greater than that of an ordinary nova yet 10 times fainter than that of a supernova. One possible explanation is that the outburst was a kilonova, which occurs when two neutron stars collide. However, none of the high-energy radiation that is typically emitted by such events was observed. Another possibility is that the explosion represents an entirely new class of celestial objects. If so, it is hoped that future telescopes with much wider fields of view, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, may find more of them.
