Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2024

19 MARCH-APRIL 2024 ASTRO PUBLISHING But they had never before seen this process happen in real time, mean- ing that direct evidence of a super- nova leaving behind a compact remnant has remained elusive. “In our work, we establish such a direct link,” says Ping Chen, a researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Sci- ence, Israel, and lead author of a study published in Nature and pre- T his artist’s impression is based on the aftermath of a supernova explosion as seen by two teams of astronomers with both ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT). The supernova observed, SN 2022jli, occurred when a massive star died in a fiery explosion, leaving behind a compact object — a neutron star or a black hole. This dying star, however, had a companion which was able to survive this violent event. The periodic interac- tions between the compact object and its companion left periodic signals in the data, which revealed that the supernova explosion had indeed resulted in a compact object. [ESO/L. Calçada]