Tour: Sagittarius A East - YouTube - astrophysics - NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory

Saggitarius A East (Sagt A East) was thought to have been a typical supernova explosion of a massive star.Now ,however,after a longer study with Chandra,astronomers have ascertained that,in fact,Sagt A East is actually where a white dwarf star exploded.White dwarfs are the shrunken stellar embers of a fuel-depleted star like our Sun that isn't large enough to supernova.The explosion is the result of thermonuclear reactions that travel quicky through a white dwarf when it pulls too much material from a companion star or merges with another white dwarf,causing the destruction of the white dwarf and a stunning flash of light.Explosions of a white dwarf are a crtitcal source of elements critical to life on Earth such as iron,nickel and chromium.Such elements are only created in the nuclear furnaces of stars or when stars explode.*Credit:NASA/Jet Propusion Laboratory-California Institute of Technology*Text by Chandra and edited by Andrew Taylor