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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.

5 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Neat-o. by mythosaz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Every time I see a cool space/science story, despite having been an adult for some time now, I still get an awesome sense of "wow" out of it.

    Keep on exploring the mysteries of the universe guys.

  2. Re:11,000 years ago, not 300 by PPH · · Score: 5, Informative

    Shit traveling near the speed of light experiences much less time than shit at non-relativistic speeds.

    I don't think relativity enters into this. In space, light travels at the speed of light. And to a photon, time means nothing.

    What we have here is a direct path length from the supernova to earth of 11,000 ly. Something went 'bang' 11,300 years ago, so we missed the first signals. But there are gas clouds and other crud floating around which reflect the pulse, making it travel longer paths. We are now seing the reflections with path lengths of 11,300 ly. And as time goes by, we will see reflections with longer and longer path lengths.

    This will (in time) be an interesting opportunity to map the structures of the gas clouds surrounding the supernova using successive images (over dozens or hundreds of years) and calculating path differences and the underlying 3D structures causing the reflections.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  3. 2008 wtf? by I4ko · · Score: 5, Informative

    How is this news? The video in TFA is from 2008, check the upload date on Youtube. There must be some weird time dilation effect going on, posting 2008 news is a new low, even for ./ on nowadays.

    1. Re:2008 wtf? by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 4, Informative

      Indeed. Also a wikipedia article, articles going back several years in Astronomy and Sky and Telescope magazines indicate this may not be "news." Also, this is not the Horrendous Space Kablooie.

      --
      Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
  4. Re:11,000 years ago, not 300 by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Funny

    To a relatively stationary you 11000 ly from the source, it was about 11000 years ago.
    To the light emanating from that explosion that reached us (unnoticed), it was 300 years ago.

    Time slows down when I read slashdot comments like this.