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Supernova Fulldome Animation Dr. Björn Voss, Planetarium Münster / LWL-Museum für Naturkunde SUPERNOVA Briefly: 1st Phase: Approach towards a red giant (realistically modeled) 2nd Phase: The supernova shock wave becomes visible within the star, the star is being heated from “red” to “white”, and it slightly expands – modelled according to observations of a star before the shock breakout 3rd Phase: The explosion itself, viewed from afar: Fast expansion of the shock front, which in the end becomes transparent and dissolves into gases drifting in space Fig. 1: Simulation of the supergiant star Betelgeuse, by Dr. B. Freytag (see below). The simulation does not show the apparent brightness as it would appear to the human eye, but physical fluxes. The eye, as a logarithmic “receiver”, would see less pronounced brightness variations, i.e., the brightest places would appear less bright and the darkest less dark. Supernova Fulldome Animation Dr. Björn Voss, Planetarium Münster / LWL-Museum für Naturkunde Supernovae are among the most well known astrophysical events. Their nature as explosions is often misunderstood in such a way that they happen within a few minutes or even seconds. In the case of Type II supernova, i.e. a supernova explosion of an aged massive star, this is correct only for the root cause of the explosion: The optically (or more precisely: electromagnetically) not detectable collapse of the core. However, the optically visible appearance of the supernova happens on time scales of many days. A feature that is found in many animations is a shrinking of the star immediately before the supernova. Perhaps such a depiction is meant to indicate the core collapse. However, any illustration of a star that shrinks before exploding is wrong. In the phase of the core collapse, the layers of