Junior-Sized Supernova Discovered By New York Teen 154
Matt_dk writes "In November 2008, Caroline Moore, a 14-year-old student from upstate New York, discovered a supernova in a nearby galaxy, making her the youngest person ever to do so. Additional observations determined that the object, called SN 2008ha, is a new type of stellar explosion, 1000 times more powerful than a nova but 1000 times less powerful than a supernova. Astronomers say that it may be the weakest supernova ever seen."
It goes both ways! (Score:5, Insightful)
Astronomers say that it may be the weakest supernova ever seen.
Or the strongest nova..
Weakest Supernova? (Score:2, Insightful)
Pet Peeve Alert:
Weakest Supernova or STRONGEST NOVA?
I'm mean seriously, a star exploding is a star exploding. Mario or Super Mario. He's still a fat plumber who eats shrooms...
I bet if the highly paid scientists found it they'd be touting the "Strongest NOVA ever see discovered" where as some plucky kid finds it they're like "umm weakest Super nova ever...."
Word play is fun...
It is almost like asking "Is it an A- or a B+" or the musical types the whole sharp flat deal...
Re:Statement on Society (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No light pollution there (Score:3, Insightful)
Standing in a 10m-deep well in the middle of a bright day you will see a piece of night sky, with stars and all, when you look up
I have trouble believing that. Light scatters in the atmosphere; it's not just coming at you in straight lines from each source. Standing in a well doesn't change the fact that the bright, scattered light from the sun or terrestrial sources will reach your eyes and make it impossible to see faint objects. Reducing the amount of peripheral, direct light will improve the situation, but I doubt it will have enough of an impact to be noticeable, and certainly not enough to see "night sky, with stars and all" on a sunny day.
Re:Weakest Supernova? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:supernova vs nova (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, yes...
The thing to realize is, in spite of their related names, a nova and a supernova are fundamentally different phenomena. They happen to have enough similarity (esp. in what's observed) to be named as though a "supernova" were just a nova only bigger, but that obscures huge differences in what's really going on.
AFAIK, neither phenomenon would be expected to produce this kind of mid-range result. Possibly it's a different kind of event altogether. (Must... resist... LHC joke...)
Re:If it's anything like my old Chevy Nova... (Score:2, Insightful)
A note on geography: upstate New York is not NYC. It's the rest of the state, some of it is far enough away from the light polution [darksky.org] that there is a chance see stars. There's small chance of seeing even the moon, let alone the milkyway [cosmosmagazine.com] in any major US city.
It's a shame. There's no good reason we have to spend good money shining light up into the sky, rather than keeping it on the ground where we paid for it to be. In a lot of areas a good case could be made to put the streetlights on timers and cut out after 11pm or midnight.
Re:If it's anything like my old Chevy Nova... (Score:3, Insightful)
There's small chance of seeing even the moon, let alone the milkyway [cosmosmagazine.com] in any major US city.
Huh? Which city have you been to where the ambient light pollution is brighter than the moon?
Re:It's misquoted (Score:2, Insightful)
to make an important contribution to (Score:3, Insightful)
chemistry, physics, biochemistry, computer science, mathematics, etc.
you need to slave almost your whole life, be at the top of your mental game, have tons of education under your belt, and you need extremely expensive instruments (well, not math)
but to make an important contribution to astronomy, you just need to look up with a cheap introductory level hobbyist telescope available at walmart, and some passion
that's amazing
Re:Sky coverage + Observing Time = Discoveries (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd give her a little more credit... I don't know all the details but reading the "Caroline's story" it does sound like she was capturing and processing the images herself (with some assistence in getting going and learning what to do). It might have been "Dad's" observatory and such.. but it still looks like she was doing the work. The co-discovery might simply have been the "hey let me check my data as well..".
The setup that some of these SN hunters is fairly automated, they maintain a list of objects that they will check on a routine basis. A group of SN hunters will sometimes pool their resources, share lists, coordinate what objects they are going to check, etc. The scopes can be automated to jump from object to object, take some exposures, then move on to the next object. The processing of the exposures can be partially automated, but it still requires going through them to determine if it's real or an imaging artifict or a cosmic ray on the image. This used to be done by using an optical blink comparitor (an old school optical box set up where you can quickly flip from viewing one photographic plate to another)
Anyway -- Kudos to Caroline. It's a fun hobby that has been keeping me busy since I was 12 and had access to a 10" Newtonian.