Things That Make You Go BOOM!

[anarchist_nomad]

An exchange of work e-mails with the spiffy chefmayhem has reminded me to remind y'all to grab your binoculars (or telescope!) and head outside tonight!

Just two weeks ago -- on August 24^th -- a Type Ia supernovae was spotted near us. Okay, it is 21,000,000 light years away, in the Pinwheel Galaxy. Still, on a cosmic scale, twenty-one million light years away is pretty near to us!

This supernova is particularly important, as it is both close to us and was spotted quite early on. Thus, it gives us a fantastic look at a Type Ia supernova in action. This type of supernova is triggered when a white dwarf in a binary star system accretes enough mass from its partner to pass the so-called Chandrasekhar limit of 1.4 solar masses. When that happens...

BOOM!

You get a runaway thermonuclear reaction that causes the star to explode.

Type Ia supernovae are generally all pretty similar. Thus, they are used as "standard candles" that help us to make significant comological observations; for instance, these supernovae are used to measure the expansion of the universe. Indeed, these are precisely the sort of supernovae that the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team observed to discover dark energy in 1998! So making close up observations of a Type Ia will allow us to do supernova cosmology with even greater precision!

In the meantime, this particular supernovae has been getting ever-brighter over the past two weeks... and should now be at about its most intense! With a pair of good binoculars, you should be able to see it for yourself -- now there is a rare opportunity! So clear skies to you, dear friends, and happy hunting!

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Notes:

1. For those who want to know more, see here, here, here, here, and here.
   
   
2. Since I have already seen this misconception pop up, I should note that Type Ia supernovae explode via a very different mechanism than core collapse supernovae. It is the latter that produce neutrinos in copious numbers. Thus, even if this particular supernova was in our own galaxy, no neutrino signal would be detected in Super-Kamiokande.
   
   
3. Tis excellent to have the rare opportunity to use my supernova icon for a post that is actually about supernovae! (Even if the supernova in the picture is core collapse, and not Type Ia...)
   
   
4. Writing this post took up the time that was supposed to go to the promised entry on the St. Giles bells. So the bells will have to wait -- I have theatre tickets in just over an hour! That's okay, though. The bells can wait -- after all, one of them has been around for nearly four hundred years! In contrast, the supernova won't wait. After tonight, it will dim and, to our eyes, be gone.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

And there was me thinking that Chandrasekhar was a famous Indian cricketer :o)

Obviously a man of many parts!

[gyades.livejournal.com]

Since I have already seen this misconception pop up, I should note that Type Ia supernovae explode via a very different mechanism than core collapse supernovae. It is the latter that produce neutrinos in copious numbers. Thus, even if this particular supernova was in our own galaxy, no neutrino signal would be detected in Super-Kamiokande.

I was wondering about the difference between Type Ia and core collapse supernovae after emailing you about this one. It occurred to me that the two types must have rather different neutrino fluxes although I did not know the sense or magnitude of the difference. So there is really no hope squared of seeing a neutrino signal from this one. Alas....

[xirpha.livejournal.com]

Mag 10 is really not visable even with a good pair of binolocar anywhere near Chicago. Even with a good small telescope it wouild be very hard to find. It does not help that it is cloudly everywhere.

I am disapointed that I will miss this event.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Alas, I don't have any binoculars, let alone a telescope. I have to rely on the internet for views of this "nearby" supernova.

(When I was a kid, I wanted a reflector telescope, but the ready-made ones were far too expensive. There was a company - it may even have been Edmund Scientific (http://www.scientificsonline.com/) - that sold kits for grinding one's own reflector, including Pyrex blanks, a wax matrix, and several different grades of abrasive. You'd then send it back to them to be silvered. They'd also sell you the ancillary optical bits, and mounting parts, but you were expected to make your own tube. Even at ten years old, I could have done it, but unfortunately the kit was still more than my family could afford.)