Cosmic Pursuits

Basic astronomy and night sky information

supernova

An Exploding Star in Messier 101

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky, Science

An image of the galaxy Messier 101 and the supernova SN2023ixf next to the emission nebula NGC 5461. Captured on May 20, 2023. Image credit – Florian Rünger/Wikipedia Commons.

A big star exploded as a supernova in the lovely face-on spiral M101 in Ursa Major this month. At a distance of 20 million light years, this is the closest supernova in five years and the first in this galaxy since 2011. The new supernova isn’t close enough to see with the unaided eye, alas, but it lies within reach of a 5” or larger telescope for visual observers (as of the end of May 2023) and it offers an easy target for imagers. [Read more…] about An Exploding Star in Messier 101

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The Veil Nebula

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky

The Veil Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The right section (NGC 6960) overlaps with the star 52 Cygni. The brighter arc at left is NGC 6992. In between lies Pickering’s Triangle. Click image to enlarge in a new window. Image credit: Brian Ventrudo/Cosmic Pursuits.

“It’s better to burn out than to fade away”, as Neil Young once said, and when it comes to burning out nothing beats a big star that blows up as a supernova. These catastrophic events occur as big stars run out of fuel in their core and become unable to hold themselves up against the relentless pull of their own gravity. Their outer layers collapse, crush the star’s dense core into a neutron star or black hole, then snap back in a violent explosion that eject as much energy in a few minutes as our sun does in its entire lifetime.

Since only the largest stars expire like this, and since the explosion itself plays out quickly over a few days or weeks, a supernova is a relatively rare event: the last known supernova in the Milky Way happened more than 400 years ago. But such explosions often leave a long-lasting imprint in the form of a visible nebula caused by the rapidly expanding shock wave of the exploding star colliding with and setting aglow the rarefied gas of the interstellar medium. Dozens of these so-called supernova remnants fleck the night sky. Most require a big telescope and sensitive camera to detect, but one of the brightest and easiest to see lies off the eastern ‘wing’ of the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. This is the famous Veil Nebula, a sprawling complex of glowing gas and one of the most intricate and intrinsically beautiful objects in our galaxy [Read more…] about The Veil Nebula

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Supernova in Messier 61

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Celestial Events

The Type II supernova SN2020jfo in the face-on spiral galaxy Messier 61 in the constellation Virgo. Captured on May 19, 2020 with a TV85 refractor, TRF-2008 0.8x focal reducer, and ASI290MM camera. Stack of 20x10s images.

The galaxy M61 has done it again: it’s produced another supernova, the eighth such event since 1926. That makes this lovely face-on spiral galaxy in the Virgo cluster one of the most prolific supernova producers of the past century.

The supernova, cataloged as SN2020jfo, was discovered on May 6, 2020 at the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory near San Diego. Upon discovery, the exploding star was magnitude 14.7. It’s since brightened to about 14.3. To see it visually requires at least a 10″ telescope, but it is relatively easy to take a snapshot with an astronomy camera and a much smaller scope. I took the 20x10s stack of images at the top with an 85mm Tele Vue refractor, an 0.8x focal reducer, and an inexpensive ZWO ASI290MM camera.

One of the more prominent members of the Virgo cluster, Messier 61 is a lovely barred spiral with winding arms knotted with star-forming nebula and clouds of blue-white stars. It’s a starburst galaxy, one wracked with prodigious star formation which explains why so many supernovae have been seen here. With lots of massive, fast-burning young stars forming, it’s inevitable that they reach their spectacular end as a Type II supernova during which the star, as it runs out of fuel, collapses and snaps back in a spectacular explosion. It releases as much energy in a few weeks as our Sun releases in its entire 10 billion year life span.

The face-on spiral galaxy Messier 61 in the constellation Virgo. Image courtesy of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

M61 is about the same size as our Milky Way and lies about 52 million light years away, so the progenitor star detonated when Earth was in the Eocene period back when Australia and Antarctica were still connected and most of the planet was covered in lush forest.

And since astronomy is not just a matter of contemplating space but also time, keep in mind that the light from thousands more supernovae from M61 are on the way to us now, events to be detected by generations of Earth-bound astronomers yet to be born.

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Simulating a Supernova in an Aquarium

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Science

NOVAE – An aesthetic vision of a supernova from Thomas Vanz on Vimeo.

Astronomers have a reasonably good handle on what happens during a supernova, an immense stellar detonation that occurs when a massive star that’s run out of fuel collapses and explodes with the brightness of 10 billion suns . These events are relatively rare, with just one or two each year, on average, in a galaxy the size of our Milky Way. While the math and physics of a supernova explosion are reasonably well understood, it’s up to visual artists and computer-generated imagery (CGI) experts to help us visualize a supernova explosion in all its glorious violence and complexity [Read more…] about Simulating a Supernova in an Aquarium

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New Supernova in Galaxy Messier 66

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky

A close-up of supernova ASASSN-16fq in the galaxy M66. Courtesy of Terry Hancock at Downunderobservatory.com.
A close-up of supernova ASASSN-16fq in the galaxy M66. Courtesy of Terry Hancock at Downunderobservatory.com.

An automated telescope on Haleakala in Hawaii spotted an exploding massive star in M66, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Leo. It appears to be a Type II supernova, the result of a massive star that has run out of fuel and suddenly collapsed and snapped back against the subatomic forces at play in its core. Like all supernovae, this star is blasting out nearly as much energy as all the other stars in the galaxy, albeit for just a few days [Read more…] about New Supernova in Galaxy Messier 66

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