Ursa Major Star Explodes

Aug. 14, 2012 | Satin Doll

[SatinDoll]

Early this morning, about 5:05 AM, my nephew saw a star explode in the constellation Ursa Major.

We're not star hounds and do not know the name of the star that blew, but he did see it and he was sober.

This is his first ever critical astronomy observation. It is amazing what one can see smoking a ciggie on the back deck.

[SatinDoll]

Open for discussion.

[mikrofon]

I would say this is Sirius, but that’s in Canis Major…

[MustKnowHistory]

This does not sound plausible.

Where are you located? Can you first eliminate local, i.e. earthly, explanations first?

[momtothree]

... for your consideration.

Okay, it was a regular cigarette, right?! /s

[cripplecreek]

The only thing I can find is news of a star in Ursa Major exploding last September. (21 million years ago)

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/story/2011-09-07/Astronomers-forgo-sleep-eyes-fixed-on-stars-explosion/50303380/1

[Eye of Unk]

Probably happened a long time ago.

Just kidding, it DID happen a LONG time ago.

Makes me feel so miniscule knowing what I see has taken years and millenniums of years for its image to arrive to me.

One could only fantasize that their solar system was grappling with a decisive social and political unrest globally, and then the Lord decides to just toss all the marbles back up and let them start all over again from cosmic dust.

Somewhere in time others will watch our demise, “Oh Mommy, look a shooting star!”

[from occupied ga]

Early this morning, about 5:05 AM, my nephew saw a star explode in the constellation Ursa Major.

Probably a meteor - The Perseid peak was just two days ago.

[montanajoe]

Perseid meteor shower

[P.O.E.]

Sure he didn’t say - “I was standing out by the still and when I took a sip from the big dipper it was like an exploding star?”

[BO Stinkss]

Bush did it

[no-to-illegals]

Looking at the night sky is a view into the past. Depending on the light distance and the years for said light to reach our location our view is always one of viewing past light from all stars. The current light of a star is never able to attain the years instantaneous therefore we view the past. That fact of we can only view the past when looking at the night sky has significance in that where does the past and present begin? To answer honestly it appears to be one’s location in the cosmos, yet how can the past be the present? No wonder time is insignificant within most equations.

[LRoggy]

You sure you weren’t watching a 2008 Obama ad being bounced back to earth? Hope and Change worked just as well there as it did here . . .

[cripplecreek]

We even see the moon as it was around a second and a half ago.



The New Horizons spacecaft that will fly past pluto in 2015 is currently about 3 hours and 12 and a half light minutes out.

[Sloth]

Double rainbow! What does it MEAN?!

[whatexit]

Sure it wasn’t an iridium flare?

http://www.satobs.org/iridium.html

[cuban leaf]

I wonder what a meteor coming almost straight at you as it burns up would look like.

[no-to-illegals]

Definitively it makes communication impossible with another world, at least in the present. Any communication would be years in the past once it arrived, and any outgoing communication would be years in the past once it arrived at the source output. Unless one could bend or fold time and space and then the implications say that would be disastrous. Makes us kind of stuck elsewhere than here in the present to find intelligent life because of the time necessary to verify a communication.

These discussions are enlightening, humorous, and joyful to imagine our insignificant selves as being able to discover and communicate with other insignificant beings not of our world.

Thanks cripplecreek, it was worth the time. It (communication) is fun to think about though probably impossible with the limited knowledge of time and space. Perhaps one day and then it will probably be all for naught, for then a certain amount of faith would be necessary for the communique to be trusted as actual.

[listenhillary]

I’ve seen many this year. Little pops of light instead of the meteor trails.

[PCBMan]

I’ll second the Iridium Flare guess. I saw one a few years ago, concurrent with a passing of the ISS. It did really look like a quick cosmic explosion. Upon seeing it in the same general area of the sky as the passing space station, I went back in and checked it out on heavens-above.com - sure enough, that’s what had happened! A bonus twofer.