Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. Pick a star. The standard astronomical wisdom suggests that stars over 5 times as massive as the sun rapidly exhaust their nuclear fuel and end their lives in a spectacular supernova explosion . With less than this critical mass they evolve into red giants, pass through a relatively peaceful planetary nebula phase, and calmly fade away as white dwarf stars like this one. Its discovery will likely force astronomers to revise the limiting mass estimate for supernovae upward.
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