Massive star explodes in brightest-ever supernova

May 7th, 2007

Never heard anything about this until today. Oddly enough this was the first time in a while that I actually put on my lab coat and decided to look into more science related content. This was an astronomer’s wet dream. To see a star explode and and observe it for this long is not too common.

US stargazers beheld the most spectacular supernova ever seen when a massive star exploded in a cosmic flash 50 billion times brighter than the sun, the space agency NASA said on Monday.

“Of all exploding stars ever observed, this was the king,” said Alex Filippenko, one of the leaders of the NASA-backed operations which observed the phenomenon that began last fall, in a statement presenting the find.

Astronomers have watched this phenomena for about 70 days now while a traditional super nova may only last a couple weeks. The article speculates that astronomers are anticipating a star much closer to us exploding.

Eta Carinae “may be poised to explode as a supernova,” the astronomy team said in its statement of the findings to be published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Eta Carine is approximately 7500 light years away, while the Super Nova that has just been observed is around 240 million light years away. Doesn’t say it would really have an effect on us here if it were to happen to this star, but that sounds kind of close in space. They do report that they are seeing some of the same phenomena with Eta Carienae that they saw with this massive star causing the biggest super nova yet recorded. Thought they may have another end of the world theory coming up.