Posted on 09/07/2004 11:26:04 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
BERKELEY – A University of California, Berkeley, astronomer has turned the NASA Hubble Space Telescope on the brightest and nearest supernova of the past decade, capturing a massive stellar explosion blazing with the light of 200 million suns.
The supernova, called SN 2004dj, is so bright in the Hubble image that it easily could be mistaken for a foreground star in our Milky Way Galaxy. Yet it lies 11 million light-years from Earth in the outskirts of a galaxy called NGC 2403, nestled in a cluster of mostly massive bright blue stars only 14 million years old.
"This has to be a massive star to explode at such a young age," said Alex Filippenko, professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley, who estimates the star's mass at 15 times that of our sun. Massive stars live much shorter lives than the sun; they have more fuel to burn through nuclear fusion, but they use it up at a disproportionately faster rate. The sun, for example, is only halfway through its expected lifetime of about 10 billion years.
"There are probably hundreds of other stars in the cluster ready to blow up, though not in our lifetime," said Filippenko.
Japanese amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki discovered the supernova on July 31, 2004, with a small telescope. Additional observations soon showed that it is a "Type II supernova," resulting from the explosion of a massive, hydrogen-rich star at the end of its life. Filippenko then used his time on the telescope to take an image of the supernova on Aug. 17, plus spectra using the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Filippenko is principle investigator for a big program to use the Hubble telescope to study nearby Type Ia supernovas to better understand their properties and thus reduce uncertainty in measurements of the acceleration of the universe.
A team of astronomers led by Jesus Maiz of the Space Telescope Science Institute discovered that the supernova was part of a compact cluster of stars known as Sandage 96, whose total mass is about 24,000 times the mass of the sun. The image shows many such clusters — the blue regions — as well as looser associations of massive stars. The large number of massive stars in NGC 2403 leads to a high supernova rate. Two other supernovae have been seen in this galaxy during the past half-century.
The cataclysm probably occurred when the evolved star's central core, consisting of iron, suddenly collapsed to form an extremely dense object called a neutron star. The surrounding layers of gas bounced off the neutron star and also gained energy from the flood of ghostly "neutrinos" (tiny, almost non-interacting particles) that may have been released, thereby violently expelling these layers.
This explosion is ejecting heavy chemical elements, generated by nuclear reactions inside the star, into the cosmos. Like other Type II supernovas, this exploding star is providing the raw material for future generations of stars and planets. Elements on Earth such as oxygen, calcium, iron and gold came long ago from exploding stars such as this one.
Astronomers will continue to study SN 2004dj over the next few years, as it slowly fades from view, in order to gain a better understanding of how certain types of stars explode and what kinds of chemical elements they eject into space.
This color-composite photograph was obtained by combining images through several filters taken with the Wide Field Camera of the Advanced Camera for Surveys. The colors in the image highlight important features in the galaxy. Hot, young stars are blue. Older stars and dense dust lanes near the heart of the galaxy are red. The hydrogen-rich, star-forming regions are pink. The dense concentration of older stars in the galaxy's central bulge is yellow.
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA), for NASA, under contract with the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Links:
Hubble Space Telescope images of new supernova
Astronomy Picture of the Day 09-07-04
For Much more, including Hubble photograph.
Bush's fault!
Women and minorities hardest hit.
Thanks for the ping. I'll let the keeper of the "space" ping list do the honors for this one.
Astronomy Picture of the Day 09-07-04
This supernova was discovered by an amateur observer....
Intensity is 200 million times our sun ......
The supernova is (was ) part of a compact cluster of stars known as Sandage 96, whose total mass is about 24,000 times the mass of the sun......
Location is 11 million lightyears away........
The Universe is still busy and magnificent....
Wow. I didn't know the Hubble telescope was aimed at the Kerry campaign.
Cool photo!
Thanks for the ping .. that's pretty cool
IIRC, from a astronomy survey course I took in the late 1970s, stars that go supernova are only about 60K years old.
The information has probably been update since.
Ready to Explode: Inside Look at an Unstable Star (Eta Carinae)
I question the timing of this supernova.
But Universe is only 6006 years old!
Pretty cool stuff... Thanks!
It's highly dependent on the mass of the star: massive stars burn-out and go supernova much faster than less massive stars. The star turns into a supernova when it uses up all the fuel in the fusion zone in the stellar interior, and can't produce further energy to resist the self-gravitational contraction. If the star is of sufficient mass, the collapse of the hydrogen-rich outer layers after the inner core burns out results in a a catastrophic release of energy, spewing out enormous amounts of matter and energy. Thus, a supernova is born.
I highly recommend Alex Fillipenko's survey course on basic astronomy done for the Learning Company. It has been updated in 2003 and discusses in detail how the accelerating expansion of universe is measured. Also discussed in detail is the age of the universe and the uncertainty in that measurement. Fillipenko's web page is: http://www.astroalex.com/
Thanks Ernest.
Ping to Kevin.
Thanks for the ping. :-)
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