Princeton University

Quicktime animation: "A supernova's birth"
This animation shows an artist's rendering of the shock wave discovered by Princeton University's Alicia Soderberg and a team of scientists. A supernova is born when the core of a massive star (the blue orb) runs out of nuclear fuel and collapses under its own gravity to form an ultradense object known as a neutron star. The shock wave erupts and ripples through the star, emitting X-rays (seen here as bright white light). The remnants of the explosion cool (the white light gets smaller), and then the visual light from the supernova glows (seen as yellow clouds). The fading white dot in the middle of the animation represents a newly born neutron star.
NASA/Swift/Skyworks Digital/Dana Berry
Click to download HD/broadcast quality (.mov, 10.9 MB)
Click to download medium file (.mov, 4.1 MB)
Click to download small file (.mov, 1.4 MB)

PowerPoint presentation 1: "Swift is opening a new window on the transient universe" (.ppt)
Neil Gehrels
NASA Swift Principal Investigator

PowerPoint presentation 2: "A serendipitous discovery" (.ppt)
Alicia Soderberg
Carnegie-Princeton Fellow, Princeton University, and principal author of "An extremely luminous X-ray outburst marking the birth of a supernova," Nature, May 22, 2008