* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Distant supernova

Blobrana · L

Astronomers have yet again rewritten the record books for discovering the most distant supernovae. Using Hawaii's W. M. Keck Observatory and Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), a team has identified remnants of two massive stars that exploded roughly 11 billion years ago.
Studying the deaths of these early stars is essential to understanding the evolution of the Universe and how its elements were formed and distributed to create later stars and even planets, said cosmologist Jeff Cooke of the University of California, Irvine.
He added that while the newly identified explosions may be the farthest of any supernovae type found to date, the innovative method developed to identify the explosions should make it possible to discover even more distant supernovae - possibly even a few of the very first stars to blow themselves apart.

Read more

Blobrana · L

After combing through years of archival images of distant galaxies, astronomers have found the exploded remains of a star that is about 11 billion light years from Earth, the most distant supernova found to date.
The discovery, reported in this week's Nature, promises to open the early universe to greater scrutiny in an ongoing effort to understand how galaxies form and evolve.

Read more

Blobrana · L

A team of astronomers has found what may prove to be the oldest supernovae identified to date, and they estimate that tens of thousands from the same vintage will be detectable in the coming years.
Jeff Cooke, a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Cosmology at the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues found two supernovae, or stellar explosions, that are believed to result from the collapse of massive stars some 11 billion years ago, predating the previous record holder by roughly a billion years. (The universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years old.)

Read more

Blobrana · L

Astronomers from the University of California have spied a supernova which lit up the early universe 10.7 billion years ago - 1.5 billion years before the previous record holder and just 3 billions years after the big bang.
A team led by Jeff Cooke spotted the event - a "type II" supernova provoked by the core collapse of a star 50-100 times more massive than the Sun - in images from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey, which snapped the same four patches of sky over five years using a 3.6-metre telescope.

Read more

Blobrana · L

Images of the most distant supernovas ever observed have been captured using a new technique that could provide glimpses of how the earliest galaxies were formed.
Two supernovas that are about 11 billion years old were spotted in a galaxy that would have been one of the first to emerge after the big bang. The technique combined data gathered over four years using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii and marks a big advance in detection power.

Read more

Blobrana · L

Faraway supernovae shatter distance record
The remnants of two massive stars that exploded about 11 billion years ago have shattered the record for the most distant supernovae in the known universe.
The faraway explosive remnants, found using a new method, could help researchers learn more about the evolution of the universe, how the elements in it formed and how they were distributed in later generations of stars and planets.

Read more

Blobrana · L

UC Irvine cosmologists have found two supernovae farther away than any previously detected by using a new technique that could help find other dying stars at the edge of the universe.
This method has the potential to allow astronomers to study some of the very first supernovae and will advance the understanding of how galaxies form, how they change over time and how Earth came to be.

"When stars explode, they spew matter into space. Eventually, gravity collapses the matter into a new star, which could have planets such as Earth around it" - Jeff Cooke, McCue Postdoctoral Fellow in physics & astronomy, who reports his findings July 9 in the journal Nature.

The supernovae Cooke and colleagues found occurred 11 billion years ago. The next-farthest large supernova known occurred about 6 billion years ago.

Read more

Blobrana · L

Astronomers have spotted the most distant and oldest star explosions yet in the universe.
Scientists captured the fuzzy death throes of two supernovae that date back nearly 11 billion years. A supernova is the violent death of a star.

Read more

Astronomers have revealed faint images of the two oldest and most distant supernovae to be discovered to date.
When a massive star effectively runs out of nuclear fuel, it explodes in a supernova - hurling much of its material into space.
The scientists described in the journal Nature how they gathered images of the exploding stars by monitoring the same galaxies over five years.
They used multiple images to pick out supernovae in the distant Universe.
The furthest two supernovae the team found occurred about 11 billion years ago.

Read more

Blobrana · L

Astronomers say they had found the farthest supernova ever detected, a giant star that ripped apart around 11 billion years ago.
A new technique enabled the cosmologists to make the find, which should help advance knowledge into these rare phenomena and their role in generating other stars, they said in a report published by the British journal Nature on Wednesday.

Read more

An international team of astronomers has found a better way to examine the origins and evolution of galaxies that form following supernova explosions - the starting point for the formation of galaxies when a star explodes - and they have discovered new supernovae in the process.

"We've devised a technique to discover supernova explosions at greater distances than previously known. The most distant one occurred during the time when galaxies were at their peak phase of star formation activity, approximately 10 billion years ago, twice the age of Earth" - team member Ray Carlberg of U of T's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

University of Toronto