Researchers at the Arayabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) Nainital an autonomous research institute under the Department of Science and Technology (DST) Govt. of India found that SN 2010kd, a super-luminous supernova stands out with the amount of mass as well as Nickel ejected during explosion, which is much more than seen in case of normal core-collapse supernovae.
What is Supernovae?
Supernovae are a kind of energetic explosions where the core of massive stars (a few times to that of mass of our Sun) go to a catastrophic phase of explosion liberating huge amounts of energy. These events are visible through very far away distances much beyond our own solar system. Super-luminous supernovae are a special type of stellar explosions having energy output 10 or more times higher than that of standard supernovae.
About SN 2010kd
The scientists said that the larger ejected mass of Super-luminous supernovae SN 2010kd indicates that the related star evolution might be different from other possible progenitors of normal core-collapse supernovae with a different possible underlying physical mechanism responsible for producing such energetic supernovae with large ejected mass and Ni. It exploded with a larger velocity but decayed shower than other similar supernovae.
The super-luminous supernova titled SN 2010kd is rather nearby — approximately at a distance of 1.5 Giga light-years discovered by Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment (ROTSE-IIIb) telescope as a part of ROTSE supernova verification project in the USA on 14 November 2010 embedded in a dwarf host galaxy towards Leo constellation.
