What are the observational differences between Type 1 and Type II supernovae?
In a type I supernovae, a white dwarf and sister star are rotating around each other, though the sister star is too close and the dwarf is literally sucking matter (through gravitational accretion) off the star. Once it has sucked up so much matter than degeneracy cannot support the dwarf against its own weight, it begins to collapse, the fusion process starts again and all at once blowing several layers of the dwarf off in a supernovae explosion. Type II are when a star (not a star remnant like a dwarf) is just too large, and as it begins to run out of fuel and collapse on itself, there is also a giant release of energy due to the collapse and it throws off much of it’s mass in a supernova explosion. So one has it’s main process through accretion, the other is a time bomb waiting to go off.
