'Instant Cosmic Classic' Supernova Discovered

Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 26, 2011 @12:52AM from the transfixed-by-distant-lights dept.

chill sends this quote from a news release by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: "A supernova discovered yesterday is closer to Earth — approximately 21 million light-years away—than any other of its kind in a generation. Astronomers believe they caught the supernova within hours of its explosion, a rare feat made possible with a specialized survey telescope and state-of-the-art computational tools. 'We caught this supernova very soon after explosion. PTF 11kly is getting brighter by the minute. It’s already 20 times brighter than it was yesterday,' said Peter Nugent, the senior scientist at Berkeley Lab who first spotted the supernova. ... the supernova is still getting brighter, and might even be visible with good binoculars in ten days’ time, appearing brighter than any other supernova of its type in the last 30 years."

1 of 141 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:Real-time brightness graph? by m.ducharme · 2011-08-26 01:59 · Score: 4, Funny

And while you're at it, can you find one that isn't full of ferocious nerds arguing about the semantics of Relativity?

--
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.