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Astronomers Watch a Super Giant Explode for the First Time

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posted on Jan, 9 2022 @ 09:57 AM
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So much going on in astronomy these days it's hard to keep up but the latest "first" in astronomy is the observation by a team using the Pan-STARRS and Keck Observatory telescopes of a red supergiant star exploding into a supernova, the supergiant had about 10 times the mass of our Sun and was about 120 million light-years away.

The team says that this unprecedented look at one of the most fascinating and large-scale events in the Universe shows that there isn't always a 'calm before the storm' in terms of supernova blasts – something that challenges previous assumptions.

"This is a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die," says Wynn Jacobson-Galán, an astronomer from the University of California, Berkeley, and the study's lead author.

"Direct detection of pre-supernova activity in a red supergiant star has never been observed before in an ordinary Type II supernova. For the first time, we watched a red supergiant star explode!"


Animation of what the Supernova would have looked like a little closer in.


This dramatic process has never been seen in real time before, though. Two telescopes were involved in making the observations, both on Hawaii: the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy Pan-STARRS on Haleakalā, Maui, and the WM Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii Island.

The collected data is already providing new insights. There was direct evidence of dense circumstellar material surrounding the star when it exploded, for example, which the researchers think was the same gas they had spotted being ejected from the red supergiant several months before.

"It's like watching a ticking time bomb," says astrophysicist Raffaella Margutti, also from UC Berkeley. "We've never confirmed such violent activity in a dying red supergiant star where we see it produce such a luminous emission, then collapse and combust, until now."
www.sciencealert.com...


Given the distance of the supernova the explosion is ancient history but making news today in the Milky Way.

edit on 9-1-2022 by gortex because: (no reason given)



posted on Jan, 9 2022 @ 10:24 AM
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a reply to: gortex

So cool.

If there is any kind of advanced civilization out there, somewhere out there, I bet there was a huge viewing party!



posted on Jan, 9 2022 @ 11:15 AM
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a reply to: gortex
This is really cool because last year when they predicted it would happen very soon,there were people debating if the way they predicted it was accurate.
Now we know they were right,hopefully they will be able to predict others-and may be able to point the James Webb scope at one.




posted on Jan, 9 2022 @ 11:21 AM
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This should have made a good test of our observation abilities, before the main show when Betelgeuse goes off.
edit on 9-1-2022 by gb540 because: (no reason given)



posted on Jan, 9 2022 @ 11:27 AM
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Funny how the central star is still there.

It's like it just blew off it's external layer or something.

Would the core still glow so brightly?
edit on 9-1-2022 by gspat because: Because - Words



posted on Jan, 9 2022 @ 12:23 PM
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originally posted by: gortex

This dramatic process has never been seen in real-time before, though. Two telescopes were involved in making the observations,


That's not really true, ancient humans have seen stars explode in real-time... still pretty cool.
edit on 24012431pm312022Sun, 09 Jan 2022 12:24:10 -0600 by imitator because: (no reason given)



posted on Jan, 9 2022 @ 12:25 PM
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No way is that a real video.



posted on Jan, 9 2022 @ 12:29 PM
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a reply to: buddha

It's a computer generated animation of what the event would have looked like based on the data we have.



posted on Jan, 9 2022 @ 02:43 PM
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So what did it really look like through the telescope?



posted on Jan, 9 2022 @ 06:52 PM
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originally posted by: buddha
No way is that a real video.


It's an animation of what they thought it might look like. I would love to see the actual data that made them think this is what happened. Sadly we're so often given the theatric rendering of these space event and they may be entirely misleading.

The data seems to show that it was a Pixelated change in luminosity at a distant point.

the journal article

Could anyone explain why they're so confident what they show in the animation is what happened?
edit on 9-1-2022 by cooperton because: (no reason given)



posted on Jan, 9 2022 @ 10:40 PM
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originally posted by: cooperton

originally posted by: buddha
No way is that a real video.


It's an animation of what they thought it might look like. I would love to see the actual data that made them think this is what happened. Sadly we're so often given the theatric rendering of these space event and they may be entirely misleading.

The data seems to show that it was a Pixelated change in luminosity at a distant point.

the journal article

Could anyone explain why they're so confident what they show in the animation is what happened?


120 light years is not far.
why dont we see some thing?
so easy to fake it.



posted on Jan, 10 2022 @ 07:40 AM
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a reply to: buddha

It's 120 million light years not 120 light years which is why we don't see anything.



posted on Jan, 11 2022 @ 05:10 AM
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I think it would be magnificent to see from a distance, and hopefully no biological, intelligent life got wiped from that solar system, but is there a time frame scale how long such an event takes place from beginning to the end?



posted on Jan, 11 2022 @ 05:48 AM
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a reply to: gortex

Another wow!

Possibly a dumb question; over what sort of timescale does that video take place?



posted on Jan, 11 2022 @ 11:40 AM
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a reply to: Freeborn

I would have thought it would take a day or two but surprisingly it's rather short , about a minute and a half !


The explosion of a supernova occurs in a star in a very short timespan of about 100 seconds. When a star undergoes a supernova explosion, it dies leaving behind a remnant: either a neutron star or a black hole.
curious.astro.cornell.edu... mediate


That must be a sight to see ... at a safe distance of course.



posted on Jan, 11 2022 @ 12:21 PM
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a reply to: gortex

I honestly thought it would take quite a few days,,,,one and a half minutes?
To think all those millions of years that star would have burnt.....and then bang, gone in a matter of seconds.

Staggering.




posted on Jan, 11 2022 @ 06:57 PM
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a reply to: gortex

Earth would be in the kill radius if red super giant Betelgeuse were to pop off and go super nova

some 2 million years ago earth was showered with remnants of a super nova which featured a rare radioactive isotope of iron
called iron -60

www.pbs.org...

Worse would be caught in a gamma ray burst which could extinguish life on earth ..



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