A supernova is a powerful and luminous stellar explosion. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when a white dwarf is triggered into runaway nuclear fusion. The explosion marks the ultimate demise of the star and briefly outshines an entire galaxy, radiating as much energy as the Sun is expected to emit over its entire lifespan.
All motion is relative. That simple fact makes tracking the motion of distant objects outside our galaxy particularly challenging. For example, there has been a debate among astronomers for decades about the path that one of our nearest neighbors, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), took over the last few billion years. A new paper from Scott Lucchini and Jiwon Jesse Han from the Harvard Center for Astrophysics grapples with that question by using a unique technique - the paths of hypervelocity stars.
