[cc2k]

From the article

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it’s very young — currently only about a day old

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How are we seeing it already?

M101 is about 27 million light years from us (more or less). Either this supernova happened 27 million years ago, or we won't see it for a very long time.

Still, it is exciting. Super Novas are fairly rare events. This one is so distant, you can't see it without a good telescope, though, and a dark sky helps (being away from the city lights).

[Nonsense Unlimited]

- How are we seeing it already?

You are obviously not up to date on the current methods of determining cosmic occurences.

The photons emitted from the dying star, streak out into the universe at light speed. After about 100 meters of so they get tired and attach themselves to tachyon particles that are zooming by at about 50 jillion times the speed.

When the tachyons reach earth in but a matter of hours, the photons let go and yell, “We’re going to Disnyland !!”

This is why most people who are really stud astronomers hang around Disneyland for the “first view” photo ops.

Disclaimer : See forum name.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

M101 is about 27 million light years from us (more or less). Either this supernova happened 27 million years ago, or we won't see it for a very long time.

Of course the supernova occurred 27 million years ago and the light from the event arrived about a day ago but yeah, it'd be very cool if we could know within a day about events that occurred at light-year distances =).

[HiTech RedNeck]

Silly. Of course it’s only Earth’s view of it that’s only about a day old.

I wonder how big the “feeder” star has to be in order to furnish enough matter to the white dwarf to let it go off in sudden fusion like an H-bomb. If a white dwarf sidled up to our Sun, could something like that happen, or would the Sun get completely eaten up leaving a still very hungry white dwarf?