Astronomers first saw the white dwarf bumps into another star.

Telescope PTF helped astronomers witness a very rare event – the collision of a white dwarf with a normal sun-like star and its transformation in the  type Ia supernova. Relevant article appeared in the journal Nature.

As told by Srinivas Kulkarni, a scientist at the California Institute of technology, their discovery is the first direct evidence that white dwarfs that create a type Ia supernova, the star-companion. Furthermore, it demonstrates that at least some of them born during clashes between dwarf and normal lights, instead of two white dwarfs. New discoveries of astrophysics were not sure how such outbreaks occur.


type Ia Supernova are one of the most important objects in space for astronomers, as their relative constancy scientists use to measure distances in space. the



Kulkarni and his colleagues were able to get the first pictures of the newborn "Nobel supernova" and learn the mechanism of their birth thanks to the automated telescope PTF and the supercomputer, which analyzed the images and found them fresh supernova through moments after they were born.

See also: Astronomers have figured out how to die the largest galaxies in the Universe.