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."
No light pollution there (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems like this kid didn't have to worry about light pollution [slashdot.org].
Sky coverage + Observing Time = Discoveries (Score:3, Interesting)
I wish they described how the discovered got funneled up to the supernova scientists on the paper published on it. She must have been with someone who really knew that the "new star" she saw there wasn't supposed to be there, and that person deserves some credit, too!
Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
While the article, and many commenters so far have remarked on the irony of the youngest amateur astronomer finding the smallest supernova, it's pretty remarkable that what she actually found was a completely new astronomical phenomenon.
From what I understand, the mechanisms behind novae and supernovae are pretty well understood. But this is something new altogether. According to the article, they're not even sure it's an actual supernova. Nobody has ever seen this exact behavior in a star before. We're going to learn a lot from this, and it would be pretty damn remarkable even if the discoverer hadn't been a 14 year old amateur.
Re:No light pollution there (Score:3, Interesting)
First, the "bottom of a well" story is false. Some discussion here: http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q241.html [astronomycafe.net] as well as at snopes. Got a piece of pipe? Try it for yourself.
Second, light pollution of the night sky is a massive problem for astronomers. The lights of Los Angeles reduced the Griffith Observatory to a tourist attraction, and the city of San Diego spent a bucket of money on shielded lighting to mitigate what it was doing to the Palomar installation.
rj
Re:Weakest Supernova? (Score:1, Interesting)
FYI: A- and B+ were referring to grades, not music notes. B+ = [86 2/3, 90), A- = [90, 93 1/3), +/- rounding method used by the prof. In practice, the difference is usually "does the prof think you deserve an A or a B?"
And as for music notes: your statement may be true in some systems like Pythagorean tuning [wikipedia.org]. However, in the more common 12-TET [wikipedia.org] system, F# and Gb are defined as the exact same note. Hint: The piano has 12 keys per octave; they're the integer values of 440 * 2^(n/12) Hz, with n=0 being middle A.
Re:Sky coverage + Observing Time = Discoveries (Score:2, Interesting)
Indeed, she is working on Tim Puckett's search team. Tim Puckett is a very driven amateur supernova hunter who collaborates with a number of other observers, like Jack Newton, who is the other co-discoverer listed. They collect massive amounts of data each night with semi and full automatic telescopes Basically they don't have the time to sift through all of it. Hence they created a search team of amateurs looking through their data. Caroline was part of this search team. Tim Puckett and his team have discovered hundreds of supernovae so far and show no sign of stopping.
She didn't spent hours on end in the dark staring through a telescope. She didn't put up her own supernova search (which is more or less impossible for a 14yo, due to the huge financial step you have to take and the amount of time it takes). She spent hours looking through images generated by automatic telescopes. It is great that she had the dedication to go through it but it isn't very hard. If you go through enough data it is certain you will find a supernova (I believe they find a supernova on 1 image out of 9000). The hard part is setting up a telescope to scan the sky, calibrate each image and present it to you.
It does disservice to the "co-discoverers" to not mention them in the summary. Without them Caroline Moore likely wouldn't have had data to sift through. I don't know the exact story but the part of each discoverer is probably: Tim Puckett coordinates the supernova search program, Jack Newton made the discovery image and Caroline Moore noticed the supernova.
References:
Tim Puckett's website [cometwatch.com]
Jack Newton's website [jacknewton.com]
Caroline's story [wetpaint.com]
As a last note. The days of amateur supernova hunting are quite numbered. Two large professional telescopes with aim to provide close to 24 hour surveillance of the sky will come online in the comming years. LSST and PanStarrs will sweep the skies with large apertures, huge CCD camera's and an impressive field of view. When those projects are running amateurs will have to aim for the holes that aren't observed...