Eta Carinae, Soon To Be a Local Supernova

da4 writes "Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy has a great article about Eta Car, a star approx 7,500 light years away from us that's ready to supernova sometime Real Soon Now." Larger versions of the Hubble-Chandra image of Eta Car are available at the Chandra site. Of course when astronomers say it's "about to explode," they really mean it probably exploded 6,500 to 7,500 years ago and we're awaiting the news.

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Re:thanks

[HTH NE1]

Of course when astronomers say it's "about to explode," they really mean it probably exploded 6,500 to 7,500 years ago and we're awaiting the news.

could you clear up that 'sun rise' and 'sun set' thing for me as well?

How about this: even though this expected supernova happened thousands of years ago, for all causal purposes, it won't have any effect upon us until we can see it. After all, the speed of light is really just the speed of causality.

So, in a local causal sense, it hasn't happened yet. The distance just means that if we thought to have any influence on it before it happens here, we'd have to have done something thousands of years ago or longer to exert a causal influence.