Supernova Remnant N49 and poet of stars Jibanananda Das

The Milky Way is one of the hundreds of thousands of galaxies in the Laniakea Supercluster. A poet of the earth, the third planet orbiting a small star of the Milky way, the sun, gazes at the clear night sky and silently wonders:

“The lines of the Earth’s old paths decay,
Love slowly fades away, do stars too one day have to die—do they?”

That poet is Jibanananda Das. In his poem ‘Dujon’ (Two People), he asked this question—do stars too have to die? Yes, they do. Stars too have to die. Among the many cosmic events occurring throughout the universe, one of the most fascinating is the birth and death of stars. We will attempt to understand this cycle of stellar birth and death through Supernova Remnant N49.

The image you are seeing—it is not a swirl of colorful smoke... It is a witness to a cosmic explosion—named Supernova Remnant N49. It is a massive, complex cloud of gas that may look like a giant firework, but in reality, it tells the story of a star’s final breath. A supernova is a massive explosion that occurs in the final stage of a star’s life, so powerful that for a brief period, that single star becomes brighter than the entire galaxy. When a star runs out of fuel, this supernova explosion takes place. Stars decay. And along with that decay exists the lament of the poet of the stars, Jibanananda. In his poem “Nirjan Sakkhar” (Solitary Signature), Jibanananda writes:

“The stars are decaying,
Hearts like stars are falling away—
Weary—making a sound like dew.”

The decay of stars did not fill the poet's consciousness and subconscious merely with lament. Because he knew that stars decay constantly, and thus death occurs constantly. To understand how stars decay, one must understand their structure and the process of burning. The stars we see in the sky are essentially enormous gaseous spheres of hydrogen and helium, within whose cores a process called nuclear fusion takes place. Our familiar fire does not burn there. Fire on earth is a reaction between carbon and oxygen, which produces relatively less energy. In stars, hydrogen nucleus (protons) fuse together to form helium. For example, every second, the sun converts 600 million tonnes of hydrogen into helium. The energy produced in fusion begins as gamma rays, which are later transformed into visible light, heat, and other wavelengths as they pass through the various layers of the star. A star remains alive as long as hydrogen fusion continues in its core; but this fuel (hydrogen) is not eternal—it eventually runs out. The greater the mass, the faster the hydrogen fuel is exhausted, and the sooner death approaches.

With his cosmic awareness, Jibanananda sensed the sorrow of a star’s life coming to an end. In his poem “Swapner Hate” (In the Hands of Dreams), he wrote:

“Time’s hand comes and wipes away all—
Even stars’ lifespans come to an end!”

Jibanananda knew that, like humans, birds, and flowers, stars too are not immortal. Every star, planet, and moon is gradually moving toward death. Time’s hand erases everything, and in one great explosion, stars embrace death. At this very moment, somewhere in the universe, a star is dying and becoming a supernova. There are two types of such supernovas.

1. Very large and massive stars (for example, those with a mass eight times or more than that of the sun) produce iron at their cores at the end of their lives. Iron does not support nuclear fusion, so energy production in the core stops. As a result, the core collapses. This immense mass suddenly contracts and turns into a neutron star or a black hole. The outer layers of the star then explode at tremendous speed—this is a supernova. This is called the death of a massive star (Type II Supernova).

2. If a white dwarf star begins to draw gas from a nearby companion star and gradually increases its mass, once it crosses the Chandrasekhar limit (about 1.4 times the mass of the sun), it suddenly explodes in a violent blast—this is also a supernova. This is called a reaction between a white dwarf star and another star in a binary system (Type Ia Supernova).

N49 is a remnant formed from a Type II supernova explosion. This supernova remnant N49 is a vast cloud of gas and dust created by the ejected material from the supernova explosion and spread across space. In the crowd of artificial images of the universe, finding a real one is difficult. Because most of the images of galaxies, black holes, and star clusters circulating online are computer-generated. This image of Supernova Remnant N49 released by NASA was captured using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). This colorful view was obtained using special filters on the Hubble to detect the light from sulfur, oxygen, and hydrogen gases. These were then overlaid on a star-filled black and white image—to give the cosmic art even more life. The background stars' image was also taken with the Hubble.

N49 is particularly important because it is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy very close to our Milky Way. N49 is the brightest supernova remnant found in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The LMC is a dwarf galaxy gravitationally bound to the Milky Way and is located about 163,000 light-years from earth. The LMC is a “cosmic laboratory” for space scientists because it contains a massive star-forming region called the Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus). To understand how stars are born, grow, and die, scientists greatly rely on the LMC. And the poet needs the death of a star to scatter a cosmic sigh across space. Because it is from the death of one star that another is born.

For the stars that die, Jibanananda felt a cosmic lament. In his poem “Nirjan Sakkhar” (Solitary Signature), he writes:
“Yet your heart did not feel the cold
of that star which fell away.”

Death is cold, and even colder is space itself. In Jibanananda Das’s poetry, stars are not merely celestial objects, but metaphors for time, eternity, and human existence. His meditations on death often merge with nature and the cosmos. In the depths of the sky, in the vast current of time, stars are born—blazing like fire, illuminating the lonely reaches of galaxies. For millions of years, stars emit light, provide warmth, and create fragmented tales of the universe; yet they are not eternal. When a star burns through the last drop of its fuel, a silent cry begins within it—an anguish of ending. Some fade slowly—becoming white dwarfs. Others explode with great force—becoming supernovas that shake galaxies with their brilliance. And some swallow all their light into themselves—collapsing silently into black holes, vanishing into the darkness of deep time.

Dead stars are not entirely dead. Their destruction becomes the backdrop for new creation. The death of a star is the cosmic cradle of new birth. Bearing the poet’s emotion in mind, we can say—stars die, so that we may be born. We are all—each of us—children of dead stars. In his poem “Hawar Raat” (The Night of the Wind), Jibanananda writes:
“The stars that died thousands of years ago in the sky’s bosom—
They too, through the window, brought countless dead skies with them;”

Stars return—reborn in other forms, in new creations. The explosion of a supernova gives rise to new elements, such as gold, silver, and uranium. These remnants scatter iron, silicon, and oxygen into space—materials that go on to form future stars and planets. Iron becomes the core of planets, silicon forms the crust, and oxygen is the key to life itself. From the debris of a star's death are born new stars, planets, and even life. The iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the gold in our jewelry—all come from the shattered remains of dead stars. Much of the heavy elements found on earth and in our bodies were forged in ancient supernovas. Without supernova explosions, there would be no carbon, oxygen, or iron on earth. In other words, we are all made of "star dust"—we are the outcome of cosmic birth born from stellar death.

Stars end their journey as supernovas, scattering light in their final blaze; but their death is the beginning of something new. Perhaps one day, from within this cloud of supernova gas, a new star will be born—one that forms planets around it. And maybe, on one of those planets, someone like Jibanananda will look up at the sky and softly murmur:

“The old star’s days come to an end
because the new ones are arriving;”
(Nirjan Sakkhar, Jibanananda Das)

The cycle of a star’s birth and death—this eternal rhythm of the cosmos—was captured with a cosmic ache by Jibanananda. So, if we choose to call the poet of Ruposhi Bangla, who is often known as the “purest poet,” the “poet of solitude,” by a new name— “the poet of stars”—it would not be a mistake.

For he himself wrote in the same poem:
“The star that dies,
its cold touches my body—"

That cosmic cold pierced Jibanananda’s soul—such anguish is only possible when one loves the stars deeply enough becoming the poet of stars.

Dipankar Dipon: Filmmaker