CHANCE DISCOVERY OF A THREE HOUR OLD SUPERNOVA

Supernovae are extremely energetic and dynamic events in the universe. The brightest one we’ve ever observed was discovered in 2015 and was as bright as 570 billion Suns. Their luminosity signifies their significance in the cosmos. They produce the heavy elements that make up people and planets, and their shockwaves trigger the formation of the next generation of stars.

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Nice

Tau.Neutrino said:

They produce the heavy elements that make up people and planets,

But not necessarily in that order.

“Ah! I’m created but have no planet to sustain myself!”

The Rev Dodgson said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

They produce the heavy elements that make up people and planets,

But not necessarily in that order.

As in the Book of Genesis.

Witty Rejoinder said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

They produce the heavy elements that make up people and planets,

But not necessarily in that order.

As in the Book of Genesis.

Gods gotten slack in the millennia going from creating the universe to appearing in Doritos

Cymek said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

But not necessarily in that order.

As in the Book of Genesis.

Gods gotten slack in the millennia going from creating the universe to appearing in Doritos

I heard he is working in Dominoes, I don’t know which one.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Cymek said:

Witty Rejoinder said:

As in the Book of Genesis.

Gods gotten slack in the millennia going from creating the universe to appearing in Doritos

I heard he is working in Dominoes, I don’t know which one.

I’m sure I saw the face of Jesus on a large cannabis bud the other day, I should have taken a photo of it.

Tau.Neutrino said:

CHANCE DISCOVERY OF A THREE HOUR OLD SUPERNOVA

Supernovae are extremely energetic and dynamic events in the universe. The brightest one we’ve ever observed was discovered in 2015 and was as bright as 570 billion Suns. Their luminosity signifies their significance in the cosmos. They produce the heavy elements that make up people and planets, and their shockwaves trigger the formation of the next generation of stars.

More…

… More

one thing astronomers have never observed is the very early stages of a supernova. That changed in 2013 when, by chance, the automated Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (IPTF) caught sight of a supernova only 3 hours old.

I wonder how young the youngest supernova is that was found before that. I do know that several bright supernovae have been seen quite early, long before maximum brightness. Even nearby ones.

SN 2013fs was surrounded by circumstellar material (CSM) that it ejected in the year prior to the supernova event.

Totally expected, but difficult to see. Also, a year is a short time, a decade would have been more expected. We’re talking Wolf-Rayet here. The supernova must be very close for the progenitor to be visible.

SN 2013fs was a red super-giant. Astronomers didn’t think that those types of stars ejected material prior to going supernova.

Ha! Some astronomers did. Supergiants are notorious for changing colour, by going wildly left and right along the top of the H-R diagram. It’s already known that supergiants can be any colour of the spectrum when they go supernova.

It takes 60 second exposures at frequencies from 5 days apart to 90 seconds apart.

That looks right. Nice, isn’t it.

SN 2013fs is 160 million light years away in a spiral-arm galaxy called NGC7610.

What do we know about NGC7610? Not much, doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry in English. Wow, it’s a long way away. 60 times as far away as Andromeda, great that they can see the progenitor star at that distance.

What sort of time frame are we talking about from the start of a supernova to finish

I guess that depends on what you call “start” and “finish”.

Can’t find a light curve for SN 2013fs, except for one that started just two days before peak. For other type II supernovae, light curves are available that start a full 45 days before peak.

What DA is alluding to is that the effects of a supernova continue for thousands of years afterwards.

However, it terms of the acute brightness, it will take several months to a few years for the supernova to drop to, say, 1% of its peak brightness.

My understanding is that the process of implosion and BANG only takes a few seconds, but the “start” is the process of fusion making heavy elements for a few millennia and the resulting nebula lasting for a few more. Peak brightness may last several months.

There is something else very peculiar about supernova SN 2013fs, to the point of being unique.

It started out looking like a common type IIn supernova, then transitioned into something that resembled a type IIp supernova. It’s now recognised as an intermediate type of supernova between type IIn and type IIp.

There are a few other supernovae that are of a type between IIn and IIp, but not many, and they’re not identical to one another.

Here’s the abstract from the technical article that spawned the news report.

With the advent of new wide-field, high-cadence optical transient surveys, our understand-
ing of the diversity of core-collapse supernovae has grown tremendously in the last decade.
However, the pre-supernova evolution of massive stars, that sets the physical backdrop to
these violent events, is theoretically not well understood and difficult to probe observation-
ally. Here we report the discovery of the supernova iPTF 13dqy = SN 2013fs a mere ∼ 3 hr
after explosion. Our rapid follow-up observations, which include multiwavelength photome-
try and extremely early (beginning at ∼ 6 hr post-explosion) spectra, map the distribution of
material in the immediate environment (<∼ 1015 cm) of the exploding star and establish that
it was surrounded by circumstellar material (CSM) that was ejected during the final ∼ 1 yr
prior to explosion at a high rate, around 10−3
solar masses per year. The complete disap-
pearance of flash-ionised emission lines within the first several days requires that the dense
CSM be confined to within <∼ 1015 cm, consistent with radio non-detections at 70–100 days.
The observations indicate that iPTF 13dqy was a regular Type II SN; thus, the finding that
the likely red supergiant (RSG) progenitor of this common explosion ejected material at a
highly elevated rate just prior to its demise suggests that pre-supernova instabilities may be
ubiquitous among exploding massive stars.

In this case, peak brightness was just 8 days after the initial explosion.

Cooperation is a wonderful thing. This supernova was observed, with complete spectra, 17 times by a total of 6 major telescopes within 50 hours of the initial explosion.

mollwollfumble said:

Here’s the abstract from the technical article that spawned the news report.

With the advent of new wide-field, high-cadence optical transient surveys, our understand-
ing of the diversity of core-collapse supernovae has grown tremendously in the last decade.
However, the pre-supernova evolution of massive stars, that sets the physical backdrop to
these violent events, is theoretically not well understood and difficult to probe observation-
ally. Here we report the discovery of the supernova iPTF 13dqy = SN 2013fs a mere ∼ 3 hr
after explosion. Our rapid follow-up observations, which include multiwavelength photome-
try and extremely early (beginning at ∼ 6 hr post-explosion) spectra, map the distribution of
material in the immediate environment (<∼ 1015 cm) of the exploding star and establish that
it was surrounded by circumstellar material (CSM) that was ejected during the final ∼ 1 yr
prior to explosion at a high rate, around 10−3
solar masses per year. The complete disap-
pearance of flash-ionised emission lines within the first several days requires that the dense
CSM be confined to within <∼ 1015 cm, consistent with radio non-detections at 70–100 days.
The observations indicate that iPTF 13dqy was a regular Type II SN; thus, the finding that
the likely red supergiant (RSG) progenitor of this common explosion ejected material at a
highly elevated rate just prior to its demise suggests that pre-supernova instabilities may be
ubiquitous among exploding massive stars.

In this case, peak brightness was just 8 days after the initial explosion.

Cooperation is a wonderful thing. This supernova was observed, with complete spectra, 17 times by a total of 6 major telescopes within 50 hours of the initial explosion.

Space exploration is a good catalyst for cooperation most of the time, that is good