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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."
Now, Who put metal in the microwave?
To be precise we don't see anything in real-time.
love is just extroverted narcissism
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.
Since nothing that is observed is happening at the time of the observation, real time is as good a term as any.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I thought it was the beans I had eaten the night before.
Heavier elements (like uranium) are actually created in the supernova event itself:
So this observation is actually recording the actual origin of all the elements heavier than iron. All the jewelry and aerospace materials you've ever seen, all the copper you use in wiring and plumbing, all elements with atomic numbers from 27 (cobalt) through 94 (plutonium) were made in crucibles like the one we just took home movies of.
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make install -not war
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
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).
Yeah that's right, another dupe from slashdot; this story was covered 97 million years ago when it actually happened.
Supernovas all look the same at birth but it's proper form to smile politely and congratulate the parents anyway.
Whoever wrote the summary of the story on Ars had a bad day. The figure in Joules is right, but it came when the energy hit the surface of the existing star, not whatever remnant remains of the core.
______ This mind intentionally left blank.
So is there some sort of automated system which gets every major telescope on, or orbiting, the planet to drop what it's doing and point at supernovae (if they can see them) as they appear? Or does someone have to get a telephone directory out and start asking some unfortunate Chilean the way to the beach in a loud voice?
I understand that astronomers have been wanting to gather as much data as they can from as many telescopes as they can on supernovae as they appear, and have organised lots of telescopes en masse before, I just wonder by what means it's achieved.
I also think that it would be incredibly cool if, in the dusty control room of an observatory up a mountain in Hawaii or somewhere, there was a big red button labeled "push in case of supernova", which grabbed the co-ordinates currently being observed, and took over every other telescope on the planet to point at them.
Also, have they done interferometry with this data? because that would be an awesomely large telescope diameter (and awesomely small resolution angle).
FGD 135
Uh? According to the annual report at the web site you linked, the total energy usage of the US (not including isolation) is about 100 Quads per year. A quad is 10^15 BTUs. One BTU is about 1055 Joules. So, the US uses ~10^20 Joules per year (J/a). The whole world uses about 4 or 5 times that amount. But, lets say the whole world uses 10^21 J/a. At that rate it will take 10^18 years to use 10^39 J. I don't think that the universe will last a substantial fraction of that time period.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Were any neutrino telescopes collecting data at the time? If so, did they see a signal? 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. Given the distance to the supernova, there probably wasn't much of a signal, but it would be interesting to know if anything was seen.