Chandra Sees Brightest Supernova Ever
Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; X-ray: NASA/CXC/UC Berkeley/N.Smith et al.; IR: Lick/UC Berkeley/J.Bloom & C.Hansen
Posted on 05/08/2007 5:22:54 PM PDT by saganite
In a cascade of superlatives that belies the traditional cerebral reserve of their profession, astronomers reported Monday that they had seen the brightest and most powerful stellar explosion ever recorded.
The cataclysm - a monster more than a hundred times as energetic as the typical supernova in which normal massive stars end their lives - may be an example, they said, of a completely new type of explosion.
Such a blast, proposed but never seen, would explain how the earliest and most massive stars in the universe ended their lives and strewed new elements across space to fertilize future stars and planets.
"It is quite possibly the most massive star that has ever been seen to explode," said Nathan Smith of the University of California, Berkeley, who estimated the star as "freakishly massive," about 150 times the mass of the sun.
Smith led a team of astronomers from Berkeley and the University of Texas who have submitted a paper about the supernova to The Astrophysical Journal and discussed the results at a news conference from the NASA headquarters in Washington.
"We're really excited about this," he said. "If it really is what we think it is, it forces us to rethink how massive stars die."
snip
The star bears an eerie resemblance to Eta Carinae, a star in our own galaxy that has been burbling and bubbling in the last few centuries as if getting ready for its own outburst. The observations suggest that the troubled and enigmatic Eta Carinae, thought to weigh in at about 120 solar masses, could blow up sooner than theorists have thought. Mario Livio, a theorist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, in Baltimore, who was not involved in the research, said Eta Carinae's death could be "the most spectacular star show in history."
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
ping
Something more serious to worry about than Global Warming... Galactic Warming.
Eta Carinae is one of the most remarkable stars in the heavens.
This star was first cataloged by Edmond Halley in 1677, as a star of fourth magnitude. Since, its brightness has varied in a most remarkable way: In 1730, its brightness reached mag 2, and again fell to mag 4 in about 1782. It brightened again about 1801 and faded back to 4th magnitude in 1811. In 1820, Eta began to brighten steadily, reaching 2nd magnitude in 1822 and 1st mag in 1827. After this first preliminary maximum, the star faded back to mag 2 for about 5 years, then rose again to about mag 0. After a further slight decline, Eta’s brightness incresed once more and reached its maximal brilliance of nearly -1.0 in April 1843, when it outshone all stars in the sky but Sirius. After this brilliant show, the star slowly faded continuously, and became invisible in 1868. Interrupted by two minor outbursts around 1870 and 1889, Eta Carinae faded to about 8th magnitude around 1900, where it remained until 1941. At that time, the star began to brighten again, and reached 7th magnitude about 1953. Slowly and steadily, Eta Carinae became brighter until about 6th magnitude in the early 1990s - the star reached naked-eye visibility again at that time. Then in 1998-99, the star suddenly brightened by about a factor two. This behavior is not fully understood at this time (early 2000), and it seems hard to predict how this remarcable variable will develop in the future.
Eta Carinae is one of the most massive stars in the universe, with probably more than 100 solar masses (Jeff Hester of the ASU, who made this HST image, has estimated 150 times the mass of our sun, Robert Zimmermann gives 120 solar masses in his article in Astronomy, Feb. 2000 issue). It is about 4 million times brighter than our local star, making it also one of the most luminous stars known. Eta Carinae radiates 99 % of its luminosity in the infrared part of the spectrum, where it is the brightest object in the sky at 10-20 microns wavelength.
As such massive stars have a comparatively short expected lifetime of roughly 1 million years, Eta Carinae must have formed recently in the cosmic timescale; it is actually situated in the heavily star forming nebula NGC 3372, called the Great Carina Nebula, or the Eta Carinae Nebula. It will probably end its life in a supernova explosion within the next few 100,000 years (some astronomers speculate that this will occur even sooner).
http://seds.org/messier/xtra/ngc/etacar.html
Really?! What for?
Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; X-ray: NASA/CXC/UC Berkeley/N.Smith et al.; IR: Lick/UC Berkeley/J.Bloom & C.Hansen
I havent seen any information about the amount/type of energy released and it’s ‘sphere of influence’ concerning this. I’ve read numerous references to Eta Carinae but not enough to even speculate as to whether it would effect Earth.
WTF?!
Being a scientist.
what is this purge? how do I miss these things... i am here EVERY SINGLE DAY
I even missed the whole snow bunny saga and the host over the sun
The outburst already happened 150 years ago - and we missed it!!!
Those are strange symbols that I don’t currently have on my keyboard?
...rather sudden Galactic warming. 5K is better than 3K, but 10,000K is something to worry about. Of course taxes is far more of an immediate danger than death for most people.
I’m flabbergasted. I missed the purge. What caused that? I always enjoyed his posts.
Purging scientists? What’s that all about?
Now that's not entirely accurate.
I’m really interested in why Radio Astronomer was purged. Can you elaborate?
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