May 28, 2013 David Latchman

Some of the smallest satellites ever launched will soon start unlocking the secrets of the largest starts in our Universe. These satellites, no bigger than a car battery, are designed to observe some of the most luminous stars in the night sky including the massive blue stars that are the precursors to supernova explosions. To do this, astronomers will use these satellites to observe a star’s surface vibrations caused by processes occurring deep inside a star in a similar way a geophysicist uses seismic waves to probe our Earth’s interior. These stars are important as some of them generate the…