image: The flash has gone: After hitting the surface at 50 million km/h the shock blows the star apart. The core turns into a neutron star, a compact atomic nucleus with the mass of the Sun but 10 km in size. This image relates to an article that appeared in the June 13, 2008 issue of Science , published by AAAS. The study, by Dr. Kevin Schawinski and colleagues at University of Oxford in Oxford, UK was titled "Supernova Shock Breakout from a Red Supergiant." view more
Credit: Image courtesy of NASA/HST/COSMOS