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Stars Live and Die


A Star's Life Movie

Watch how a star evolves ... from birth to death.


Stars don't last forever. While some simply exhaust their fuel and die peacefully, others explode as supernovae. This picture shows the brightest supernova in four centuries, which lit up the southern sky in 1987. Astronomers using Hubble watched the remnant of the blast develop into a dumbell-shaped structure consisting of two blobs of debris expanding away from each other at nearly 6 million miles per hour.

 

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SUPERNOVA 1987A
 
 
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