Have you ever wondered what a supernova is? Or even if the t-word is real? Well, I'm going to talk about what a supernova is, what it does, and how it's made. The word supernova is plural for supernovae or supernovae. The definition of a supernova is that any star that explodes violently after erupting suddenly increases to many millions of times its normal level. The supernova arrived around the 1930s by Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky. It is very rare to see supernovae every 50 years in the Milky Way. In our galaxies it is not possible to predict supernovae, it is impossible. (“Supernova”)A supernova is the explosion of a massive supergiant star. It could shine as brightly as 10 billion suns! The total energy production may be 10^44 joules, as much as the total production of the sun during its 10 billion year life. The most likely scenario is that fusion proceeds to build an iron core. The “iron group” of elements around mass number A=60 are the most tightly bound nuclei, so no more energy can be obtained from nuclear fusion. Supernovae are classified as Type One if their light curves show sharp maxima and then gradually die out. The maximum could be around 10 billion solar luminosities. Type two supernovae have less sharp peaks at maxima and peak at about 1 billion solar brightness. They die more abruptly than Type One. Type two supernovae are not observed to be present in elliptical galaxies and are thought to be present in the population of type one stars in the spiral arms of galaxies. Type one supernovae typically occur in elliptical galaxies, so they are probably type two stars. With the observation of a number of supernovae in other galaxies, a more refined classification of supernovae based on the observed spectra has been developed. The central part of the chart results from short-lived massive stars. They are most commonly found in Sc-type spirals, but also in the arms of other spiral galaxies and in irregular galaxies, particularly starburst galaxies. ("supernova") Type Ib/c and II-L, and perhaps most type IIn, supernovae are thought to be produced only by stars with near-solar metallicity levels that result in high mass loss from massive stars, so they are less common in older, more distant galaxies. The table shows the expected progenitors for the main core-collapse supernova types and the approximate proportions of each in the local vicinity. ("supernova")Works Cited"Supernova". Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 11 December 2013. Web. 12 November 2013. "Supernovae". Supernovae. Np, nd Web. November 12. 2013. .