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UW Astronomers Find A Rare Supernova 'Imposter' In A Nearby Galaxy (washington.edu)
After a star explodes as a supernova, it usually leaves behind either a black hole or what's called a neutron star -- the collapsed, high-density core of the former star. Neither should be visible to Earth after a few weeks. But this supernova -- SN 2010da -- still was.
"SN 2010da is what we call a 'supernova imposter' -- something initially thought to be a supernova based on a bright emission of light, but later to be shown as a massive star that for some reason is showing this enormous flare of activity," said Breanna Binder, a University of Washington postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astronomy and lecturer in the School of STEM at UW Bothell. Many supernova imposters appear to be massive stars in a binary system -- two stars in orbit of one another. Stellar astrophysicists think that the impostor's occasional flare-ups might be due to perturbations from its neighbor.
"SN 2010da is what we call a 'supernova imposter' -- something initially thought to be a supernova based on a bright emission of light, but later to be shown as a massive star that for some reason is showing this enormous flare of activity," said Breanna Binder, a University of Washington postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astronomy and lecturer in the School of STEM at UW Bothell. Many supernova imposters appear to be massive stars in a binary system -- two stars in orbit of one another. Stellar astrophysicists think that the impostor's occasional flare-ups might be due to perturbations from its neighbor.
Many years ago, astronomers noticed that some stars, usually red giants with white dwarfs orbiting them, would flare up every once in awhile. Since oftentimes these stars were, most of the time, too dim to be conspicuous, many of them were uncatalogued at the time that they flared up. So it looked as though new stars were coming into existence, so they were given the name "stella novae" (new stars) which was shortened to "novae" (singular "nova). This was the usual case---matter from a red giant dumps a bunch of hydrogen on a white dwarf, the hydrogen burns very quickly and brightly, and when the reaction is over both stars still exist.
Then folks realized that some stars blow themselves out of existence. These were named supernovae in contrast to ordinary novae.
And today we find an ordinary nova in another galaxy, but instead of calling it that, we call it an imposter supernova. I'm offended.