The Hubble Telescope was observing a weak supernova 110 million light-years award when it found something unusual: a zombie star.
Normally, a supernova, which is an explosion of a dying star, destroys the star, but Hubble was able to capture what seemed to be a small fragment of the star that survived.
The supernova, or SN2012Z, was found in the NGC 1309 galaxy, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Eridanus. It was first detected by the Lick Observatory Supernova Search in January 2012, NASA said in a recent release.
There are a number of types of supernovae. Type Ia are the most common and occur in a binary system with a white dwarf. White dwarf's gravitational pull will siphon material from the other star in the system, and the added mass will eventually trigger a runaway nuclear chain reaction that causes a supernova and the destruction of the star.
Researchers classified SN2012Z as a Type Iax supernova, which is a weak one that doesn't completely destroy the white dwarf and leaves a zombie star behind, according to the release.
Previously Hubble spotted NGC 1309, and findings were revealed by astronomers, led by led by Curtis McCully, a graduate student at Rutgers.
The light from the supernova is too bright for researchers to examine the zombie star and its companion. Instead, researchers will use Hubble to test a hypothesis on what binary system causes a Type Iax supernova, according to the release.
"Back in 2009, when we were just starting to understand this class, we predicted these supernovae were produced by a white dwarf and helium star binary system," said Ryan Foley, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
NASA said that the larger, and more massive star soon offloaded material, helium, and hydrogen, to the smaller star. The bigger star would evolve into a white dwarf and the companion, would swallow the white dwarf and the "helium core" of the companion star, after getting rid of its outer gas layers.
As a binary system, the white dwarf would pull matter from its companion, which causes a supernova.
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