A couple of weeks ago, astronomers spotted a star exploding in the nearby face-on spiral M101. They quickly determined it was a Type Ia, the kind used to calibrate the cosmic distance scale, and therefore a star of exceeding importance Read more
Berkeley Lab scientist Peter Nugent discusses a recently discovered supernova that is closer to Earth - approximately 21 million light-years away - than any other of its kind in a generation. Astronomers believe they caught the supernova within hours of its explosion, a rare feat made possible with a specialised survey telescope and state-of-the-art computational tools.
The finding of such a supernova so early and so close has energised the astronomical community as they are scrambling to observe it with as many telescopes as possible, including the Hubble Space Telescope.
A once-in-a-lifetime nearby stellar explosion now unfolding in a neighboring galaxy has astronomers at the W. M. Keck Observatory scrambling to ask questions that can't be answered at any other ground-based telescope in the world. The first big question: What causes this pivotally important type of stellar cataclysm? Observing this spectacular supernova, dubbed PTF11kly, began on August 24, with the detection of the explosion in the nearby Pinwheel Galaxy, a.k.a. M101, by the automated Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) survey. That survey is designed to detect short-lived astronomical events as they happen. Read more