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."

Watching the Postironic Genesis

[Doc Ruby]

This supernova event's description includes a mention of how stars make only the elements no heavier than iron:

After a few million years of generating energy by fusing light elements into heavier ones (hydrogen to helium, helium to carbon, and so on), the core runs out of fuel. Iron builds up in the very center of the star, and no star in the Universe has what it takes to fuse iron.

Heavier elements (like uranium [wikipedia.org]) are actually created in the supernova event itself:

Along with all elements having atomic weights higher than that of iron, it is only naturally formed in supernova explosions.

So this observation is actually recording the actual origin of all the elements heavier than iron. All the jewelry and aerospace materials you've ever seen, all the copper you use in wiring and plumbing, all elements [wikipedia.org] with atomic numbers from 27 (cobalt) through 94 (plutonium) were made in crucibles like the one we just took home movies of.

automation

[Anonymous Cowpat]

So is there some sort of automated system which gets every major telescope on, or orbiting, the planet to drop what it's doing and point at supernovae (if they can see them) as they appear? Or does someone have to get a telephone directory out and start asking some unfortunate Chilean the way to the beach in a loud voice?

I understand that astronomers have been wanting to gather as much data as they can from as many telescopes as they can on supernovae as they appear, and have organised lots of telescopes en masse before, I just wonder by what means it's achieved.

I also think that it would be incredibly cool if, in the dusty control room of an observatory up a mountain in Hawaii or somewhere, there was a big red button labeled "push in case of supernova", which grabbed the co-ordinates currently being observed, and took over every other telescope on the planet to point at them.

Also, have they done interferometry with this data? because that would be an awesomely large telescope diameter (and awesomely small resolution angle).

Re:Obligatory Back to the Future joke

[rssrss]

Uh? According to the annual report at the web site you linked, the total energy usage of the US (not including isolation) is about 100 Quads per year. A quad is 10^15 BTUs. One BTU is about 1055 Joules. So, the US uses ~10^20 Joules per year (J/a). The whole world uses about 4 or 5 times that amount. But, lets say the whole world uses 10^21 J/a. At that rate it will take 10^18 years to use 10^39 J. I don't think that the universe will last a substantial fraction of that time period.

Any signal on a neutrino telescope?

[flabbergasted]

Were any neutrino telescopes collecting data at the time? If so, did they see a signal? The delay between the time of arrival of the X-ray burst and the neutrino signal would put bounds on the mass of the neutrino. Given the distance to the supernova, there probably wasn't much of a signal, but it would be interesting to know if anything was seen.