The Birth and Death of Stars

Stars come and go, or so they say. The most spectacular exit from the cosmic stage is by a supernova. Astronomers have several ideas on how stars make their exits, but nobody has actually seen a star form.

Galaxy NGC 2525 with supernova SN 2018gv
Credits: NASA, ESA, and A. Riess (STScI/JHU)
and the SH0ES team;
acknowledgment: M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble)
Modified at Big Huge Labs (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents by anyone)

Sure, secular astronomers and cosmologists make claims that there are "stellar nurseries" and such, but those are based on presuppositions of cosmic evolution. Biblical creationists know that God created the stars during Creation Week, and some creationists think that it may be possible for a star to form because God also created the laws of physics, elements, and all, but that would not really be a big deal. There is no empirical evidence of stars forming. Because creation is running down, we have seen and will continue to see stars expiring.

Well, there goes another star, disappearing into the night as if it had never existed. For an entire year, Hubble scientists used the space telescope to record snapshots of SN 2018gv—a supernova (SN) or exploded star. Experts then edited those images into a NASA video showing the fast fading of the supernova. It’s hard not to wonder, given the astronomical number of stars in the night sky, why we witness more stars fade than form. For that matter, has anyone ever seen a star form?

Koichi Itagaki, an amateur astronomer, first found the exploding star SN 2018gv as a super-bright spot amid spiral galaxy NGC 2525 in January 2018.1 Professional astronomers then trained the Hubble Space Telescope onto the fast fading object. Reporting on the new video, NASA news described the fading process:

If you've taken a shine to this article, the rest can be found at "A Supernova and the Scripture".