What is a Type Ia Supernova?

A Type Ia Supernova is like a firecracker that explodes in space because it gets too full of gas.

Imagine you and your best friend are both blowing up balloons at the same time, but one of you uses a bigger balloon. When the smaller balloon can’t hold any more air, poof! It bursts, and the bigger balloon keeps going. That’s kind of what happens with a Type Ia Supernova.

A white dwarf star is like a tiny, super-dense balloon, it's the leftover part of a star that has already finished burning its fuel. If this white dwarf gets too close to another star or pulls in too much gas from a nearby star, it can’t hold it all anymore.

Boom! The white dwarf explodes in a supernova, sending out a bright flash of light across the universe, like setting off a firecracker that shines as bright as a million stars!

Because this kind of explosion always happens in the same way, scientists use it to measure how far away other stars and galaxies are, just like using a ruler to see how big something is.