In 2014, astronomers finally got their chance to see the phenomena, using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Their key finding was it appeared that most of the material ejected by the explosion was moving towards us and developed a 3-D computer model of the explosion that explained the observations. In this model they included a large disk of cool gas around the equator of the binary caused by the white dwarf pulling on a wind of gas streaming away from the red giant. In the figure showing the new 3-D model of the explosion, the blast wave is yellow, the mass ejected by the explosion is purple, and the disk of cooler material, which is mostly untouched by the effects of the blast wave, is blue. An extraordinary amount of energy was released during the explosion, equivalent to about 10 million trillion hydrogen bombs.
