Supernova Birth Observed From Orbiting Telescope

FiReaNGeL writes "Astronomers have seen the aftermath of spectacular stellar explosions known as supernovae before, but no one had witnessed a star dying in real time — until now. While looking at another object in the spiral galaxy NGC 2770, using NASA's orbiting Swift telescope, scientists detected an extremely luminous blast of X-rays released by a supernova explosion. They alerted 8 other telescopes to turn their eyes on this first-of-its-kind event. 'We were looking at another, older supernova in the galaxy, when the one now known as SN 2008D went off. We would have missed it if it weren't for Swift's real-time capabilities, wide field of view, and numerous instruments.'" Bad Astronomy has an excellent, well-illustrated story about the discovery as well. I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property contributes a link to the BBC's coverage, and adds a nugget gleaned from Ars Technica: "SN 2007uy's collapse caused an X-ray burst of about 10^39 joules, most likely due to the 'shock break out' when the energy of the core's collapse finally reached the neutron star's surface."

Re:"in real time"

[avandesande]

To be precise we don't see anything in real-time.

Re:Interesting use of the term 'real time'

[pha7boy]

time is relative. if you see it now, it's real time. Too bad is not naked eye close.

Re:Interesting use of the term 'real time'

[thermian]

Since nothing that is observed is happening at the time of the observation, real time is as good a term as any.

Re:Interesting use of the term 'real time'

[CowboyNealOption]

Wouldn't it be mostly visible to someone with x-ray vision only? Plus if it was too close, too large a dose of x-rays probably wouldn't be a good thing.

Error in summary of Ars story

[DrJay]

Whoever wrote the summary of the story on Ars had a bad day. The figure in Joules is right, but it came when the energy hit the surface of the existing star, not whatever remnant remains of the core.

Re:Interesting use of the term 'real time'

[MillionthMonkey]

That means they watched in 'real time' something that happened about 100 million years ago?

Yeah, exactly. Wake me up when a supernova explodes down the street.

Actually there are inertial frames in which this supernova practically just exploded, e.g. that of the neutrinos which just arrived here from the supernova traveling at almost the speed of light. They would see their flight path undergo Lorentz contraction; as the velocity approaches c the distance shrinks to zero.