Supernova: The Violent Death of a Star

by Donald Goldsmith

Nearly 160,000 years ago, a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud (a galaxy close to our own Milky Way) erupted in a majestic, violent death. Traveling at the speed of light, the radiation from this explosion reached Earth on February 23, 1987. The brightest supernova seen in four
centuries, it was one of the most significant discoveries of twentieth-century astronomy.
The saga of Supernova "1987A" began with a once-in-a-lifetime observation by a lone astronomer in the Andes mountains. Astronomers soon found that the death throes of a far-off sun had yielded a treasure trove of information. This lucid, fascinating account by one of today's leading writers
on astronomy details the results these astronomers obtained and the basic conclusions they drew.
The story that Donald Goldsmith tells spans the globe from satellites orbiting high above the Earth as they detect bursts of gamma rays and X rays, to "Neutrino" experts capturing a few of these elusive subatomic particles in water-filled chambers deep underground, to the creation of supernova
"models" in supercomputers. Taking us to the scene of this spectacular astronomical event and to the various locations of its aftermath, Goldsmith recalls our historical fascination with supernovae; explains how stars form and then live through nuclear fusion; reveals a star's different kinds of
electromagnetic radiation; and demonstrates how exploding stars transform primordial material into complex elements essential to life on Earth.
Readers of Supernova will gain a heightened awareness of the universe and our role in it.

Paperback

First published September 1, 1989

About the author

Donald Goldsmith is an astrophysicist, popular science author and screenwriter. He is the president of Interstellar Media. He is also the winner of the 1995 American Astronomical Society's Annenberg Foundation Award for Education and the Klumpke-Roberts Prize for his contributions to the public understanding of astronomy.

He received his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley in 1969.He taught at Stony Brook University before becoming a full-time popularizer, and has written, co-written, or edited a number of popular science books.

His book "Origins," co-written with Neil Tyson, was the companion volume to the four-hour PBS series with the same title. Dr. Goldsmith worked on Carl Sagan's "COSMOS" series, and on Neil Tyson's series of the same name, and was the science editor and co-writer of the six-part PBS series "THE ASTRONOMERS." He has written many popular articles for journals such as Scientific American, Natural History, Discover, and Astronomy.