Drawing together contributions from 67 authors across 15 countries, the resulting study suggests that the calcium-rich supernovae start off as compact stars that quickly lose mass at the end of their lives, giving off an outer layer of gas that exploding materials then collide with.
"Most massive stars create small amounts of calcium during their lifetimes, but events like SN 2019ehk appear to be responsible for producing vast quantities of calcium and in the process of exploding disperse it through interstellar space within galaxies," says astronomer Régis Cartier, from the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRLab) in the US.
Being able to see the inner workings of this type of supernova will open up new areas of research and give us a better idea of how the calcium in our bones and teeth – and everywhere else in the Universe – came to be.