Description

Simulation of a Red Supergiant Star before and after it explodes as a Type II Supernova. Color shows velocity (top) and density (bottom). As the shockwave from the explosion reaches the star's bubbling surface, material blasts into space with speeds of ~10,000 miles per second!

Horizontal slice through the equator of a 3D Radiation-Hydrodynamic simulation constructed with Athena++ (C++) and the stellar evolution code MESA (FORTRAN). Simulation by Yan-Fei Jiang (Flatiron), Jared Goldberg (UCSB), & Lars Bildsten (KITP). Data is visualized using python's matplotlib package and cmasher color maps. In the upper left panel, the star shows large-scale convection; blue-colored fluid moves inwards and orange-colored fluid moves outwards, and the color map ranges from -30 to +30 km/s. After the explosion, all motion is outward and the new color map saturates at 15000 km/s. Lower panels are reflected about the x-axis, with darker colors corresponding to decreasing log(density). The black circle in the center of the star represents the inner boundary of the simulation.