We were floored to see how bright this star was in x rays when we first observed it, and then it changed every day we pointed at it with our telescopes. We estimate the gas exploded off the white dwarf to be about 100 million degrees, about six times hotter than the gas at the center of our Sun. We are seeing about an Earth mass of material expand at more than 10 million kilometers/hour. The expanding gas from the explosion is now larger in size than our own solar system.
Sumner Starrfield
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We are learning about the chemical composition of the red giant and how fast it is losing matter itself. With this information we can predict how much longer the red giant will live before becoming a white dwarf.
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This explosion is similar to that of a terrestrial hydrogen bomb.
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