A new supernova was discovered a few days ago by an amateur astronomer. This is a type1a supernova caused by the gravitational collapse of a red giant star. For a very brief moment, supernovae become brighter than every other star in their galaxy combined. This one was discovered in a very bright galaxy that is easily visible in small telescopes.
http://www.universetoday.com/108386/bright-new-supernova-blows-up-in-nearby-m82-the-cigar-galaxy/
The animation below shows pre and post discovery images.
Very cool, I_S.
looks like a bunch of supernovas to me. Obviously I don’t understand the photos.
Look at the “smudge” that runs through the center of the image. The smudge (billions and billions of stars) is the galaxy. Near the right side of the smudge there is an enormously bright star that appears and disappears. That is the supernova. That is a single, indistinguishable star that suddenly collapsed in a massive explosion causing it to become brighter than all of the stars in that galaxy combined.
A nebula, the outer shell of the star, will expand at incredible speeds until it becomes so tenuous that essentially disappears. The Crab Nebula pictured below is a supernova remnant. The Chinese actually saw the supernova that created the Crab Nebula in the year 1504. Anyone on Earth at the time would have seen it.
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Okay, I see it. Thanks for the explanation IS. I would never have figured it out by myself.
The biggest supernova is the world’s Fiat/paper money system & the $quadrillion derivatives market.
When they go boom, it’ll be like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
Those galaxy pics are amazing, btw.
At the center of that Crab Nebula is a neutron star that rotates once every 33 milliseconds creating an optical and x-ray pulsar. (That is HAULIN’ ASS!) Neutron stars are the tiniest and densest stars in the universe. Neutron stars have an average density that is one quadrillion times that of water! (That is some heavy shit!)
I_S
Just God farting..Now I S why don’t you go find us some unicorns.
T4C ,I forgot about you.You should go with I S ..seriously
I am sitting here bored and it’s only getting more boring.When are you knuckleheads going to wake up.
I S and T4C ,I didn’t mean to piss on your parade but the truth is I have seen all of this before.Back in the mid 70s when I was a teenager I had some buddies that brought a 100 pills of that purple microdot
Acid. Over next few months I probably took about 25 to 30.Sometimes when I look up in the sky I can see all kinds of strange things just like when we were high.I think I saw that super nova or maybe it was just another flashback.
Those are some beautiful pictures.bb
No sense of humor? As the joker said …why so serious ?
The reason the second picture is blurred is that it isn’t focused on Cigar galaxy as precisely as the first photo with the glowing supernova in it. That causes all the stars in the second pic to “bloom” a bit, removing the esthetic qualities of comparisons.
But it still shows the supernova popping on. Be best to show the second pic (no nova) first. then you don’t the blur when observing the fist pic (nova on) as much..
Just hope that nothing like that goes “bang” in our neighborhood. The shower of lethal high potential particles would scrub the earth clean of life, blow away our atmosphere and generally sterilize the planet from even if the nova were several hundreds of light years away.
Any planets the star had that blew up are pure toast.
You just can’t believe the power and energy released when this happens.. In our neighborhood, the star in Orion (Betelgeuse) is a red giant, a prime candidate and way too close for comfort.
MA
Muck said:
“Just hope that nothing like that goes “bang” in our neighborhood. The shower of lethal high potential particles would scrub the earth clean of life, blow away our atmosphere and generally sterilize the planet from even if the nova were several hundreds of light years away.”
Sounds like just what the doctor ordered!
Muckster is right about the effects of a supernova close to Earth. Betelgeuse is only 10 million years old but because of it’s size, it will die very quickly in a supernova explosion. Scientists expect Betelgeuse to produce Type II Supernova within the next million years. Hopefully we will not be “looking down the barrel of the gun” when she goes off. If placed at the location of our Sun, Betelgeuse’ physical diameter would extend beyond our own asteroid belt between Earth and Mars. It also has a high proper motion and is moving at 33 kilometers per second.
I_S