Astronomers have captured the death of a massive star from its first faint flash of X-rays, revealing an unusual explosion that may bridge the gap between ordinary supernovas and more extreme, gamma-ray-burst-producing stellar explosions
The event began in March 2026, when China's Einstein Probe spacecraft detected a brief X-ray flash from a galaxy about 500 million light-years away. Follow-up observations identified the source, initially designated EP260321a and later named supernova SN 2026gzf, as a broad-lined Type Ic supernova.
Such explosions occur when massive stars that have lost their outer layers of hydrogen and helium collapse. They are often associated with narrow, powerful jets t...
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