Supernova Birth Observed From Orbiting Telescope

FiReaNGeL writes "Astronomers have seen the aftermath of spectacular stellar explosions known as supernovae before, but no one had witnessed a star dying in real time — until now. While looking at another object in the spiral galaxy NGC 2770, using NASA's orbiting Swift telescope, scientists detected an extremely luminous blast of X-rays released by a supernova explosion. They alerted 8 other telescopes to turn their eyes on this first-of-its-kind event. 'We were looking at another, older supernova in the galaxy, when the one now known as SN 2008D went off. We would have missed it if it weren't for Swift's real-time capabilities, wide field of view, and numerous instruments.'" Bad Astronomy has an excellent, well-illustrated story about the discovery as well. I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property contributes a link to the BBC's coverage, and adds a nugget gleaned from Ars Technica: "SN 2007uy's collapse caused an X-ray burst of about 10^39 joules, most likely due to the 'shock break out' when the energy of the core's collapse finally reached the neutron star's surface."

Comments

Re:Interesting use of the term 'real time'

[SBacks]

Yes, space is big and light takes a long time to get to us. By 'real time', they mean they are watching the photons coming from the actual death of the star, and not the photons coming from the debris from years and years later.

Re:Data?

[Gat0r30y]

The astronomer was looking at another supernova very close to the one in question - the number i read was 8 seconds after the start (of X-ray emissions) of the new supernova - they started getting data. Indeed they got really lucky here.
On a completely unrelated note
Have you ever seen a supernova blow up?
No, but if its anything like my old chevy nova it will light up the night sky

CORRECTION - I made a mistake in that submission

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to correct this part of my submission:

SN 2007uy's collapse caused an X-ray burst of about 10^39 joules, most likely due to the 'shock break out' when the energy of the core's collapse finally reached the neutron star's surface."

That should've been SN 2008D, not SN 2007uy. I confused the old supernova with the new one somehow, which is pretty bad considering it even has the year as part of the name. The NEW supernova is the one whose X-ray burst released approximately 10^39 joules.

Also, the unnamed "scientists" who were lucky enough to find this are Alicia Soderberg of Princeton University & her colleagues, just so we give credit where credit is due.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

Re:"in real time"

[adavies42]

Not actually true, signal propagation from your retina to your visual cortex is not instantaneous.

Re:Obligatory Back to the Future joke

[Lord Crc]

I just had to try to put that into perspective, so I looked up the net annual usage of electricity in the US. If we had somehow captured, converted and stored all that energy, the US would spend about 45 million years using it up (assuming linear growth similar to the last 10 years, and I didn't screwed up the math).

Re:Watching the Postironic Genesis

[jmichaelg]

...all elements with atomic numbers from 27 (cobalt) through 94 (plutonium) were made in crucibles like the one we just took home movies of.

Nucleo-genesis doesn't stop at plutonium. The transuranic elements get created just as well. The only difference between them and the elements up to and including plutonium is longevity. I'll bet a lot of astronomers were vying for scope access so they could look for elements in the island of stability.

Re:Any signal on a neutrino telescope?

[meringuoid]

The delay between the time of arrival of the X-ray burst and the neutrino signal would put bounds on the mass of the neutrino.

Actually, the neutrino burst would arrive before the X-ray burst. The neutrinos are released as the degenerate gas at the stellar core collapses to neutronium; they pass through the surrounding material as if it wasn't even there, and set out into the universe immediately.

Once the neutron core has formed, further infalling matter hits the hardest surface in the universe, and this produces a colossal shock. The X-ray burst is released only when this shock wave reaches the surface of the star. That won't take long, but it's long enough; the neutrinos are already far out into space.

The principle still holds, of course; the neutrino mass affects the neutrino velocity, and so the timing of the two bursts will give us data on those quantities. But the delay will probably be in quite the opposite direction to what you suggested.