CrazyNeutrino said:
Astronomers see supernova shockwave for first time
The shockwave generated by the explosion of an ageing giant star has been observed by an international team of astronomers.
Key points
A supernova occurs when a star collapses in on itself
Astronomers have theorised a shockwave was part of this process
The shockwave was observed when a red giant exploded
The star was 270 times the radius of our Sun and 750 million light years away
The discovery, accepted for publishing in the Astrophysical Journal, will help scientists understand the life cycle of stars, said study co-author Brad Tucker of the Australian National University.
more…
So “shockwave” is a brief flash of light that
precedes the much slower brightening of the supernova. Type II supernova. Not sure whether there’s anything similar from a white dwarf, Type Ia supernova, which proceeds outwards then inwards then outwards again.
> Scientists have previously observed a shockwave in X-ray
OK
> The second exploding red giant they observed, however, did not shows signs of a shockwave.
OK
> The second Kepler mission — known as K2 — began in 2014 following repairs to the space telescope
Huh? What repairs? (Checks websites). Ah, I see, not a telescope repair as such but a clever way to use sunlight to stabilise the telescope after the loss of two of the four reaction wheels. Bloody failing gyroscopes again, has happened on at least four major spacecraft, should shoot the company that manufactures them.
> With K2 it is doing three to 5,000 galaxies at a time; we’re increasing the amount of galaxies and we’re hoping to increase the amount of supernovae we find.
Hold on, the Kepler K2 mission is supposed to be looking for exoplanets, not supernovae. It’s optics are such that it can’t even see galaxies clearly. But they’re right in that it could plot the light curve of a supernova in a galaxy with unprecedented precision. (Checks websites).
It is anticipated that K2 will:
. Provide a yield of hot planets around bright stars for follow-up transit spectroscopy to facilitate rapid advances in the characterization of exoplanet atmospheres.
. Provide a yield of small planets around bright, small stars to facilitate the most precise follow-up measurements to date of masses, densities and compositions.
. Identify locations and characteristics of potentially-habitable planets around bright M-dwarfs in the solar neighborhood.
. Determine if hot gas giants exist around young stars, or whether they migrate to small orbits at a later epoch by tidal or other interactions.
. Determine the relationship between stellar structure, rotation and activity within stellar associations over a range of ages and metallicity.
. Identify the progenitors of Type Ia supernovae from photometric structure in the rise to outburst maximum.
. Discover and characterize binary stars within open clusters and stellar associations.
. Characterize internal stellar structure and fundamental properties of stars using the tools of asteroseismology.
. Provide a large, regular cadence survey of AGN activity in the optical bandpass.
. Participate in multi-mission, multi-band monitoring campaigns of ecliptic targets along with other space-based hardware or ground-based telescopes.
OK, so they are looking at galaxies in order to find progenitors of Type Ia supernovae, and these Type II supernovae are essentially bycatch. I don’t see how the Kepler telescope could tell us anything about such progenitors, because there’s no way that a white dwarf can be seen at that distance, even with better telescopes like the VLTI. I hope Kepler is being used to provide astronomical alerts for other telescopes to look in the correct direction.