Did a star go nova tonight?

Did anyone see the very bright pulse of light in the northern sky tonight?
Around 9:10pm pdt, I was riding my motorcycle in the countryside north of town, the sky was very clear and since the moon hadnt risen yet it was very dark. I was traveling north, kind of watching the sky, noting there were a lot of small aircraft in the sky, when just to the right of barely visible star, a very bright pulse of light started from nothing. It grew in intensity, and apparent size for several seconds. At this point it was the brightest object in the northern sky. Then, it seemed to get dimmer and smaller, very briefly, the grew to double its size and flashed out. Over the next couple of seconds you could see it almost flicker out til there was nothing there.
The whole thing lasted maybe 10-15 seconds. It was about 15 degrees west of north and about 20 degrees up from the horizon.
I noticed a couple of things,
1) it was stationary, it didnt move.
2) The color of the light was a brilliant white.
I dont think it was a meteor, what are the odds of getting a on end view of a meteor burning up. The color was wrong and just didnt look like meteor. When it flashed out you could almost see a shrinking structure.
Did I witness a star going nova?

I'm not completely knowlegeable in stars going nova...but I believe they take longer than 15 seconds to go from star to nova.

i dont know where you are but i belive i may have seen the same event tonite not sure what time but i was looking at the view of lake superior from my back window looking at ships sitting in the water with my binaculars and it was at a time when it was very dark and no moon out....and then out of the corner of my eye saw bright flashes of white as well....thought it was wierd so i went out the front door to see what it was and rite as i got outside saw three fading pulse's of light coming from the north north west direction....i thought it may have been lightning but there werent to many clouds out and it was pretty nice out....im in the duluth area by the way if that helps as a reference point or something.

When the Perseids Meteor shower was around I saw several things similar to what you saw and theorised they were probably Micro meteors coming straight in rather than 'skimming' into the atmosphere

Yep.

spaceweather.com...

i saw that also when i went to try and round up my cats for the night. i looked up and saw an incredibly bright star and then looked around to check the position of another bright star i knew of further to the right and when i looked back the bright star wasn't there anymore. i was going to mention it on here but forgot all about it till i saw this post.

[edit on 4-9-2007 by justyc]

From what I have read, stars that go nova stay bright for days. Some can even be seen during the day time.

It was probably a meteor. A nova or supernova would remain bright for a much longer period of time.

reply to post by CPYKOmega


the thing in that picture has a tail and what i saw didn't. it was just incredibly bright and then 2 seconds later when i looked back, it wasn't there. i looked for about 30 seconds for signs of clouds of a possible airplane but there weren't any of either around

the other possibility is that something else other than a star blew up in space.

does anyone know if say, the iss or some satellites containing highly explosive stuff blew up, what would be visible from earth and for how long?

hmmm seems plausable that it could be metoers or whatever but i did not acctually see what was causing the light i just saw the light and its was very interesting to me....not sayin that it was a meteor shower or whatever but if it was isnt it intersting that events like this seem to be happing more frequent then normal? or is it just because im a newb to these sorts of things?

Maybe some aliens nuked other aliens..


In all seriousness, the bright flashes and stuff would be cool to see. I'm not outside enough to see this kind of stuff, and I don't have the patience to wait.

[edit on 9/4/07 by NovusOrdoMundi]

Maby it was a space ship, hit by another ship..

I have a feeling, that something is going on - out there in space.

I'm glad some one else saw the event that i did. More significantly that someone in another part of the country saw it as well. I am in central california if it were a point view meteor then only myself or some one in the very near vicinity would have seen it as a point of light, not someone a couple thousand miles away, ie minnesota.
I have seen several large fireball meteors and countless other meteors and what i saw last night was not a meteor, the color and intensity were very different from anything i've seen before.
Something happend for sure, just not sure what it was.

Like others have said, novas usually last a bit longer than 10-15 seconds.

It could have been a meteor heading straight for your position, which could be why from your perspective you didn't see any movement.

Maybe it was one of those Iridium satellite flares. A 10-15 seconds flare seems about right.

Iridium Flares

The reflections are characterized as peaking at magnitude -6, lasting for about 10 seconds in a dark sky, and satellite movement of some 5 degrees. One needs binoculars to see the satellites ordinarily as they are magnitude 6 to 7.

More related links:

Wikipedia: Iridium (satellite)
Heavens-Above

The second link is pretty cool, you just select your location from a map or a list, the server generates predictions for you, so you can time your sky observations.

Off-topic: Did the server go down for 10-15 seconds just now?

Originally posted by Beachcoma

Off-topic: Did the server go down for 10-15 seconds just now?

I think it did as I had problems too

I would first check to see if it was an iridium flare. Your description fits quite well. A bright one is quite impressive. As posted by Beachcoma, it is easy to check at heavens-above.com

If a star went nova and you saw it...it probably happened billions of years ago. My guess is it's a meteorite. I heard there was a recent meteorite shower anyway.

The time taken for a nova to decay by 2 or 3 magnitudes from maximum optical brightness is used to classify a nova via its speed class. A fast nova will typically take less than 25 days to decay by 2 magnitudes and a slow nova will take over 80 days.

Source: en.wikipedia.org...

Hard to say what you saw. Very well could have been a meteor coming straight at you, I have seen some that almost looked stationary, though not for 10-15 seconds. That might be long enough for it to hit the ground.

I brought something up in Starry Night, see if you can circle the area where you saw this, and maybe we can find an explanation.



edit: oops, thats tonights sky, still close enough though

edit 2: There were a couple of Iridium Satellites flying around that time, see if you can pinpoint them to your location. www.heavens-above.com...
[edit on 4-9-2007 by Quasar]

[edit on 4-9-2007 by Quasar]