Millions of years ago, before Earth’s North and South American continents joined landmass, some 21 million light-years away, an aging and bloated star abandoned and annihilated ghosts in dramatic fashion. died in a supernova explosion.
On Friday, May 19, light from the blast finally reached the telescope of Japanese amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki, alerting the wider astronomical community. This supernova is officially named SN2023ixf.
“The photons that left that exploding star 20 million years ago have now washed up on our shores from a long, long voyage through space,” says an astrophysicist at Harvard’s Smithsonian Institution Center for Astrophysics. Grant Tremblay says.Spread the word Supernova on social media. “That’s what’s happening now. We’re watching this object finally explode, and this planet has been dead for 20 million years.”
SN2023ixf is the closest supernova of its kind to Earth in the last five years, and the second closest supernova in the last decade. to NASA. SN2023ixf is therefore a rare opportunity for astronomers to study the fiery death of stars. The supernova is too small to be seen with the unaided eye, Tremblay said, but it should be visible with a modest hobbyist telescope.
Because supernovae fade rapidly, stargazers should seize the opportunity to observe supernovae at multiple wavelengths. “From local astronomers to large multi-billion dollar space telescopes, the entire global community has come together,” Tremblay said.
How to find supernova SN2023ixf
SN2023ixf exploded in M101, also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, located in the night sky near Ursa Major. M101 is a bright spiral galaxy lying face-on from Earth and a member of the Messier catalog of celestial objects, making it a popular target for backyard astronomers. A 4.5 inch telescope is enough to see supernovae. A supernova appears as a bright spot of light. according to sky and telescope. To find M101, first locate Mizar, a star in the tail bend of Ursa Major, and follow his five stars from there. Or, to be more precise, you want to point your telescope at right ascension 14:03:38.580, declination +54:18:42.10.
[Related: Astronomers just confirmed a new type of supernova]
Alternatively, the Virtual Telescope Project, a global network of high-quality amateur telescopes, Live stream supernova observations Begins May 26 at 6:30 PM ET.
“M101 is photographed every night by humans all over the world, from hobbyists to observatories of all kinds. [The Sloan Digital Sky Survey], so it was inevitable that this would eventually be found. But I was really happy that Itagaki discovered yet another supernova,” says Tremblay. Itagaki is not a professional scientist, but he is the co-author of more than a dozen scientific papers based on supernova observations. Tremblay says Itagaki has a “legendary” ability to discover supernovae, and collects such “discoveries like Thanos and the Infinity Stones.” Itagaki’s discoveries include the 2018 supernova SN 2018zd, which proved to be an entirely new type of supernova in the universe.
After capturing a bright burst of SN2023ixf on May 19, Itagaki submitted his findings to the International Astronomical Union agency. Temporary nameserver website. From there, professional astronomers answered the call, and within days researchers began pointing major ground and space telescopes at the supernova, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. .
All of these telescopes will measure SN2023ixf’s light curve, which “means this target’s brightening and dimming at multiple wavelengths,” Tremblay said. The spectrum extends from X-rays to optical light to infrared.
Lessons learned from the exploding sun
These observations will help scientists characterize the star that exploded to form SN2023ixf and better define the types of supernovae. Astronomers already know that SN2023ixf is a Type II, or “collapse” supernova. This happens when a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel. Nuclear fusion reactions in the core can no longer push outwards against the star’s own gravity. The core of the star collapses inward and explodes outward in less than a second.
“This shockwave can propagate outward, ejecting surrounding gas and emitting light at all different wavelengths,” Tremblay said. By studying how its afterglow evolves over time, scientists can learn about the mass and composition of late-life stars.
And the composition of stars is related to life on Earth and, if it exists, elsewhere in the universe. Stars increase in chemical complexity throughout their life cycle. Stars formed after the Big Bang from primordial hydrogen, first merging into helium and then into heavier elements all the way to iron. When these stars die in supernovae, the intense heat and pressure form all known elements heavier than iron, seeding them throughout the universe and becoming the raw material for rocky planets and life itself. “The story of life in the universe can be reduced to increasingly complex stories in many ways,” says Tremblay.
The explosion of SN2023ixf literally sheds light on the process of human birth. Supernovae die out quickly, Tremblay said, but they will remain a subject of study for years to come. Meanwhile, the global excitement about supernovae “represents the fact that people all over the world are so easily sharing the wonders of our universe,” he says. Just the explosion of a star in a distant galaxy can light a fire in people’s hearts. ”
