Self Destruction The Death of A Star
August 29th 2008 07:50
Gemini Observatory GMOS-North Image showing Optical image of the host galaxy NGC 2770
Its not often that we get the chance to see a dying star exploding in real time.
Astronomers have previously observed thousands of post stellar explosions, known as supernovae, but they have always seen them after the massive cloud of debris had dissipated, Yet until now no one since 1604 has witnessed a star dying in real time when Kepler wrote an article about a new bright star.
A composite image of Kepler's supernova remnant. The image incorporates information from the Chandra Observatory, Hubble and Spitzer Telescopes.
The German astronomer Johannes Kepler studied the star for a year, and wrote a book about it titled "De Stella Nova" ("The New Star").In 1940 the gaseous cloud astronomers studying was an exploded star first commented by Kepler and was so named the Kepler nova.The latest outburst occurred in the spiral galaxy NGC 2770, located 90 million light-years from Earth,
In essence we are now seeing back in time some 90 million years. A typical supernovae briefly outshines most neighbourhood stars. The life of a supernovae is short ranging from a few hours to weeks before it begins to fade from view.
The Star named SN 2008D exploded earlier this year (2008) and within a few hours observatories around the world began to study its light. In a rapid sequence of events the Gemini North telescope was able to capture and dissect the object’s light in a set of optical spectra that contains the earliest spectrum ever obtained of a massive star ending its life in a supernova explosion outside of our galaxy’s neighborhood.
On Wednesday August 20 2008 fellow astronomer Peter Maples who lives only a few kilometers from me discovered a Supernova named SN2008fa at magnitude 17.6 it far to dim to bee seen with naked eye, Even a large telescope will have difficulty without the aid of a CCD camera.
Supernova 2008fa discovered recently by Australian Amateur Astronomer: image P. Marples
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Comment by Damo
For the Sake of Argument
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Comment by CarlCan
Astroearth
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Comment by The wonderful Peter Yang
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Comment by CarlCan
Astroearth
Thank you for the comment.
Yes scary perhaps this will happen to our Sun sometime in the future, although not in our liftime.
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