New data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has confirmed that three stars, exiled from their galaxies have exploded in deep space. These explosions could give astronomers an idea of what happens in the those mysterious empty areas of space between galaxies.
Usually, giant exploding stars at the end of the lives called Supernova are embedded within galaxies, and play host to millions of stars. The data from Hubble indicates that the stars went supernova alone, in the void between galaxies in different clusters. Between 2008 and 2010, scientists discovered three errant supernova using a telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The new discovery could reveal more data about the three supernovae.
According to Robert Sanders of the University of California, Berkeley. The supernovas were located about 300 light years away from the closest galactic neighbor, nearly 100 times farther than Proxima Centauri, Sun’s nearest stellar neighbor, located 4.24 light years away. The supernovas originated from galaxies that are located 1 billion light years from Earth.
Berkeley researcher and lead author Melissa Graham said that many planets orbiting these exploding stars would have been destroyed in the blast. Graham stated that it would have been a fairly dark background indeed, populated by the occasional faint and fuzzy blobs of the nearest and brightest cluster galaxies. Though the galaxies have exploded into the void, they are not the only stars stuck in deep space.
A recent study has revealed that 15 percent of massive clusters of galaxies are banished into intergalactic space by the very same force that exiled the three supernovas. Graham and the team have discovered another supernova, but they aren’t sure of it’s an exile. Sanders stated that if the fourth supernova is in the globular cluster, it would mark the first time the supernova has been seen exploding inside a cluster like that.[ Source (pdf)]