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The Milky Way's Most Recent Supernova That Nobody Saw

Posted by samzenpus on from the didn't-see-it dept.

StartsWithABang writes: A little over 300 years ago, a supernova — a dying, ultramassive star — exploded, giving rise to such a luminous explosion that it might have shone as bright as our entire galaxy. And nobody on Earth saw it. Located in the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the light was obscured, but thanks to a suite of great, space-based observatories (Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra), we've been able to piece together exactly what occurred. Not only that, but observations of a light-echo, or reflected light off of the nearby gas, has allowed us to see the light from this explosion centuries later, and learn exactly how it happened.

2 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Neat-o. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Thanks for your permission. We were staying up days worrying we wouldn't get it.

  2. too dim by epine · · Score: 0, Troll

    If no-one could see it because it was too dim to see everywhere on earth, then we probably should describe the source object as "luminous" rather than "bright".