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Space Science

Supernova Imaged by Hubble Telescope 163

Posted by michael from the long-shot dept.
Delta Vel writes "First discovered by a Japanese amateur astronomer on July 31, this Type II supernova was imaged by Hubble on August 17th. The newly named SN 2004 dj, the closest supernova to be observed in over ten years, is about 11 million light-years away in the spiral galaxy NGC 2403. Looks like they goofed in one of the images, though--the arrow points to a different bright spot on the before-and-after image than it does on the main and annotated images." Reader Saeed al-Sahaf writes "Today, astronauts Gennady Padalka and Mike Fincke popped open the hatch on the Russian side of the ISS spacecraft and quickly stepped through the fourth and final spacewalk of their six-month mission. Their mission? Install three antennas and replace a 2-foot-square Russian pump panel. But of course, because it isn't a part or our Mission to Mars, it is still too dangerous work on the Hubble Telescope, which after all, is only used for science."
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Supernova Imaged by Hubble Telescope More

Supernova Imaged by Hubble Telescope

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  • Awesome (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:06PM (#10165904)
    It's about time they got a bittorrent server in space.
    • " It's about time they got a bittorrent server in space."

      That's insane!

      Do you have any idea how long it will take for traffic to go up to the space station and back down again?

      *whistles*
    • And here I was thinking CRAP!!! The government is using spy satellites to find the main suprnova server! CRAP!

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by pacslash ( 784042 ) <pacslash AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:07PM (#10165909) Homepage Journal
    The RIAA is now building a rocket which can be sent into space to deliver a cease and desist order to supernova to stop piracy once and for all.

  • Neato (Score:1, Interesting)

    by g-to-the-o-to-the-g ( 705721 )
    It looks cool and all, but theres an even bigger looking one to the left. How exactly can they tell the difference? Maybe the wavelength/frequency of the light is different, and if so how would they actually know what they're looking at? I wonder how accurate the stuff that these scientist tell us is. I'm sure a lot of this stuff is just based on educated guesses.

    PS. No, I didn't rtfa.

    • Re:Neato (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:22PM (#10165977)
      how exactly can they tell the difference?

      Who said they could? Lol.

      But seriously, I know the dynamic range of CCD's used telescopes can be at least 16 bits grayscale. To display them on a monitor/lcd you have to do some conversion. What basically look like very faint distinctions of shades of grey appear to be a detailed, crisp, starry picture of the sky to us (after conversion by the computer).

      End result: They know that this white spec is ~100 times brighter than the white spec next to it, by looking at the raw intensity values observed from the camera.

      p.s. Yes, I know that is a color image -- they probably took 3 grayscale images with red,green,and blue filters.

      • Re:Neato (Score:2, Informative)

        by M1FCJ ( 586251 )
        p.s. Yes, I know that is a color image -- they probably took 3 grayscale images with red,green,and blue filters.

        Bingo! Hubble takes grayscale pictures and these gets converted to false colour later. The reason? Hubble doesn't shoot with real colour because it would be useless for science. Instead, it uses some filters to pick up radiation from some certaion ionized atoms, hence HII (Hydrogen two) reference in the annoted picture. Now, looking at this picture, certain hue (like red) can represent HII. As a

      • Re:Neato (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 )
        Brightness isn't going to tell you whether or not the object is a supernova. In fact, the supernova is LESS bright than the star next to it. A good way to tell is to look at the CCD artifacts, like the vertical and horizontal lines. The longer they are, the brighter the object.
        • Those are not CCD artifacts, those are diffraction lines from the 'spider' in the telescope, the thin vertical pieces of material that hold the secondary mirror.

          Typically there are four, resulting in the four (or 2 depending on how you count) perpendicular diffraction spikes. Many designs exist, some that spread the diffracted light so that it is not obvious to the eye.

          I don't think diffraction spikes are useful, other than making bright stars look more 'starry'.
          • Then why does that happen with my digital camera? Whatever. THe point is, the bigger/longer they are, the brighter the star. It's just a quick visual reference, not scientific.

    • Re:Neato (Score:5, Informative)

      by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:49PM (#10166108)
      The difference is, the "bigger looking one to the left" was there in the template image, and the supernova isn't. It's incredibly easy to tell the difference between SN and star. The hard part is telling the difference between a supernova and an asteroid. Luckily, the next night the astroid will have moved, and the supernova will have stayed.

      But even if you weren't sure, the "wavelength/frequency" of the light is INCREDIBLY different. A good eye can tell the difference between all the different sorts of supernova spectra in seconds.

      Educated guess, my ass.

      By the way, I'm one of Filippenko's supernova checkers. Hi everybody!

      -Harrison

      • Way Cool Harrison, Sadly, most folks think cosmologists and astronomers are pulling their theories about the universe out of a black hole... explaining the subtleties of super novae and their importance as standard candles, and how they're one of the critical components in understanding the composition of the universe including dark matter and vacuum energy, is no small task.

        Our public schools haven't done a particularly good job of explaining the fascinating detective work required to tease out answers

    • Re:Neato (Score:4, Interesting)

      by deglr6328 ( 150198 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:58PM (#10166148)
      Looking at the redshift of some common spectral line will give you an immediate answer. What I want to know is if the neutrino [wikipedia.org] pulse was detected at one of our observatories like super kamiokande [u-tokyo.ac.jp] like supernova 1987a was [rl.ac.uk]. This one is much further away so I don't know if it was possible....
      • Good question. Although neutrinos are fast, they are still not as fast as light. 1987a was pretty close, I'm not sure how much later than the actual explosion they would hit us. On the other hand, this supernove was detected more than a couple of days ago, someone must have been observed by now.

        The other thing I wonder is will we be able to see the light echo of this supernova, it would be pretty great to see the surrounding layers of gas.

        • Re:Neato (Score:3, Informative)

          by deglr6328 ( 150198 )
          the neutrino pulse for 87a was seen hours before the optical observation.... http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~soper/StarDeath/sn1987a.h tml
          • Are we talking about optical detection or optical observation?

            • Re:Neato (Score:3, Informative)

              by aiabx ( 36440 )
              In this case, the supernova was observed almost as soon as it was visible. We can tell, because we have amateur astronomer's images from just hours before the supernova exploded, and nothing out of the ordinary was there.
              -aiabx
      • I believe I read that Super Kamiokande was down for replairs caused by a technician accidentally desrtoying photomultiplier tubes. Luckily there're a number of nutrino observatories in the world, including the one that determined that solar nutrinos change flavor.

        In another response, someone noted that the nutrinos for SN1987a arrived before the light... though 'C' is the limit of at which things in this universe may travel, folks have to remember that light only travels at 'C' in a perfect vacuum. The s

        • Re:Neato (Score:3, Informative)

          by stevelinton ( 4044 )
          Also the neutrinos get out of the Supernova core instantly, whereas the energy that is going to come out in photons has to fight its way up through the upper layers of the star.
        • Doesn't that mean everything we know about physics is wrong, and there is a God, afterall?

          jk
    • "... bigger looking one to the left ..."
      That's probably a star in our galaxy

    • Re:Neato (Score:3, Informative)

      by juhaz ( 110830 )
      It looks cool and all, but theres an even bigger looking one to the left.

      Yeah, that's a star. About 11 million light years closer than the supernova. Just to give a hint of a relative brightness...

      How exactly can they tell the difference?

      Well, dunno, if you don't want to hear anything about doppler and red shift or wavelength, how about the fact that the bright star has been there for as long as we've been looking whereas the supernova just popped to brilliance a few months ago from a location that d
    • The one on the left is a foreground star, much closer. Kind of like a match a foot from your face might appear brighter than a 10-million-candlepower searchlight 100 miles away.

  • Must be a slow news day (Score:5, Funny)

    by kingkade ( 584184 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:09PM (#10165920)
    They'll put any old thing up, this happened 11 million years ago for God's sakes.
  • naked eye. That would be unusual. Has it reached it's peak brilliance yet? I know that takes several days.

    • Not visible to the naked eye (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ...because it is in another galaxy.

      If it were in our own galaxy then it would have a chance of being visible.
    • What I would want to see is one that lights up the night as if it were day. Heard that happened once, would love to see it with my own eyes.

      • Re:I want to know if it will be visible with the.. (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        What I would want to see is one that lights up the night as if it were day. Heard that happened once, would love to see it with my own eyes.

        If it really appeared as bright as the sun, but was coming from a star-sized pinpoint in the sky, that might be a little hard on the retinas if you looked at it directly.

        Now, in the event you notice that the entire upper atmosphere has been turned into an orange smog by the gamma rays, then you know that the supernova was really too close for comfort. In that case,

      • Heard that happened once, would love to see it with my own eyes.

        I wonder what the residents of that now-ex-solar system thought? And perhaps that'd be a good section of the sky to look for messages in? Perhaps they saw it coming, and could only save "themselves" by broadcasting their technology to any civilization that could make use of it.

        • Too late for that. The message would have had to leave before the supernova, so it would have already passed us.

          We'd have to go FTL a loooong way to look for any signal.
        • the star was only 14 million years old. Although it is pretty long for us, it is an blink of the eye for evolution. It we are talking about native life, they wouldn't have been more than single celled bacteria. Life was just like that for 3.5 billion years on earth. Everything happened in the last 500 million years.

          If they weren't native, then probably they had the means of travelling between star systems, no contest, it's just like a huge Florida evacuation, only 14 million times larger. :-)

      • The one happened before "casted shadows", not lighted up the night as if it were day. It's not the same thing.

        Venus can cast shadows and it is pretty bright but it doesn't make it as it were day. Neither full mooon, which is the brightest object in the sky by far but it makes the terrain visible pretty easily.

    • Re:I want to know if it will be visible with the.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Soldrinero ( 789891 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:19PM (#10166234)

      Type Ia supernovae take about a month to reach their peak brightness. While this is a Type II, a different class of explosion, I think the timescale is comparable. Accoring to this page [freeuk.com] the supernova had an apparent visual magnitude of 11.3 in early August. This is a factor of 100 dimmer than the naked eye can see under the best conditions (magnitude 6 is the dimmest the unaided eye can see).

      If you're unsure of why a higher number means a dimmer object, or just want more information, czech out the Wikipedia entry on visual magnitudes [wikipedia.org].

      By the way, the last supernova that was visible to the naked eye was SN1987A [google.com] in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

    • No, but it is easily visible in an 8" telescope.
      -aiabx
  • Submitter needs to spend less time thinking up clever editorials and read more Slashdot [slashdot.org].

  • When first sighted... (Score:3, Funny)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:14PM (#10165943) Homepage
    The Suprnova stronly resembled a large collection of pirated games, moveies, and Television shows [suprnova.org]. Later confirmation sightings revealed it to be not in fact Suprnova, but only a mirror.

  • Article on UC Berkeley's website (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:14PM (#10165944)
    UC Berkeley's NewsCenter has a nice article [berkeley.edu] about this. The astronomer is from UC Berkeley.
  • Looks like they goofed in one of the images, though--the arrow points to a different bright spot on the before-and-after image than it does on the main and annotated images."

    AHA! CONSPIRACY! This also means we didn't actually land on the moon, and lends credence to my little-green-men-at-roswell theory. Not the alien autopsy though, that was just nonsense.

  • Even better on an intergalactic level.

    I'm kind of disappointed though. I was hoping it would be background worthy. [img21.exs.cx]

    • The image you linked to is a picture of the Cat's Eye Nebula [google.com], a planetary nebula. A planetary nebula is the result of the slow death of a star similar in mass to our sun. A supernova is the result of the explosive death of a significantly more massive star (about 8x more massive).

      Supernovae do leave behind pretty glowing nebulae, though. For instance, the Crab Nebula [google.com].

      • My mistake. This isn't really my area of study, so I hope you'll pardon my ignorance.

        Still very, very beautiful. Makes for a nice and simple but pretty background too (something I have a great difficulty in finding sometimes).

  • They goofed? I think you did (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xhris ( 97992 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:24PM (#10165986)
    "Looks like they goofed in one of the images, though--the arrow points to a different bright spot on the before-and-after image than it does on the main and annotated images."

    I don't think so. Looking at the pics its the same one in both. I think the submitter is confused as there is a large similar looking nebula in the south-east (bottom left, which *is* south-east)

    • (bottom left, which *is* south-east)

      Not to nit-pick too much, but south east is actually almost directly up in the image, as indicated by the directional arrows on the annotated image.

  • High Rez Goodness (Score:5, Informative)

    by digitalgimpus ( 468277 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:25PM (#10165993) Homepage
    Not for the dialup dudes, but great for broadband buddies:

    http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/2004/23/images/ a/formats/full_jpg.jpg [hubblesite.org]

  • Super Novas & Nebulas are different critters (Score:3, Interesting)

    by superbaltar ( 774807 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:43PM (#10166076)
    The way I understand it, a super nova would explode like a nuclear bomb in the air, that is, in all directions, so shoulded the upper right image be the correct one? Nebulas are like the foreground objects, often like wisps of fog. They are either the birthing ground of stars or a _long_ ago remnant of a super nova.

    • Re:Super Novas & Nebulas are different critter (Score:5, Informative)

      by CyberBill ( 526285 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:12PM (#10166207)
      Messier object 1 (M1), more commonly known as the Crab Nebula, is a good example of a "Long ago" supernova remnant.
      Crab Nebula Info [seds.org]
      The star went supernova almost a thousand years ago, and that is whats left.

      During the actual event of a supernova, though, the star (from so far away) only seems to go from being a normal star to an amazingly bright one, and then slowly dimming down over a few months (or years). The reason is because stars are so huge they cannot simply explode like in the movies, after all they are in a constant state of nuclear fusion!!

  • The arrows are correct!!!! (Score:5, Informative)

    by CyberBill ( 526285 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @10:59PM (#10166150)
    They arrows are fine... You just have to realize that the first images have the majority of the galaxy cropped out... They are only showing NGC 2403-1, instead of the large NGC 2403.

  • Almost lost my bearings.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by John_Allen_Mohammed ( 811050 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:02PM (#10166165)
    Propz to the Nasa guys for marking some of the images with the earths relative polar position [hubblesite.org]. This should come in handy if I ever get lost in space [imdb.com]!

  • Nearby galaxy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:05PM (#10166176)
    Anyone else kinda glad that the supernova in question is in a "nearby galaxy" (nearby is a relative term, obviously) rather than our galaxy? If it can be mistaken for a local star at that distance, imagine what it would be like up close and personal.

    • Re:Nearby galaxy (Score:5, Informative)

      by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @03:04AM (#10167084)
      There've been supernovae observed within our own Galaxy: the famous example is the Crab Nebula, whose supernova was recorded by Chinese astronomers in the 11th century, and was visible in daylight for months. There's a pulsar there now. There just haven't been any recently.

      There are plenty of stars just itching to blow, though. Eta Carinae [nasa.gov] is about ready to pop, and Betelgeuse [nasa.gov] isn't far off. Either of these stars blow, we'll have a hell of a show.

    • An "up close and personal" supernova might have been responsible for the Cambrian-Ordovician mass extinctions and glacial age, some 0.5 billion of years ago. The massive pulse of gamma ray turned the ozone layer into a brown nitrous dioxide layer.

      In turn that (A) allowed UV radiation from the sun to cook a lot of organisms. Yes, including those under water. _And_ (B) affected the climate so massively, that the Earth was turned into a cosmic ball of ice for an awfully long time. _And_ (C) must have caused
      • On the other hand, _if_ there's a God, you have to give the guy some credit. This is a much more clever way to devastate a planet than just a flood. Very efficient too.

        Efficient?

        The photon radiation from a supernova is utterly trivial; supernovae emit monstrous amounts of energy in neutrinos, but only a tiny amout as gamma. Since it's the gamma you want if you're planning to cook the Earth, that's inefficient enough right there. Not to mention the fact that the Earth will only intercept a tiny fraction

        • Well, first of all, I meant "efficient" actually as in "effective". That pulse of gamma radiation did a thorough job of causing the biggest mass extinction in history.

          But even if we talk efficiency as in physics: compare it to rising the ocean level that much. Even completely melting the polar caps won't do. We're talking either:

          A. bringing a helluva lot of water from somewhere else. Which ought to cost a helluva lot of energy. Or

          B. just creating more water. Which means even more energy. Think: E=m*c^2.

    • Re:Nearby galaxy (Score:3, Informative)

      by HeghmoH ( 13204 )
      According to http://stupendous.rit.edu/richmond/answers/snrisks .txt [rit.edu], the kill radius for a supernova is around thirty light years. Beyond that, bad stuff happens, but less as the distance increases, and life would survive. Our satellites would probably all get toasted, though.

  • Still waiting... (Score:4, Funny)

    by z3021017 ( 806883 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:10PM (#10166199)
    Well, I guess it's only another 5 billion years til we get to see one REALLY up close.

    • Re:Still waiting... (Score:4, Funny)

      by hawkeyeMI ( 412577 ) <brock@NOSPaM.brocktice.com> on Sunday September 05, 2004 @11:45PM (#10166328) Homepage
      I guess I'd better go get some SPF 20,000 sunscreen then.

    • Re:Still waiting... (Score:4, Informative)

      by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @02:19AM (#10166969)
      Actually our sun does not have enough mass to go supernova. A star needs a mass about 1.4 times our own for it to go supernova, and this is called the Chandra Limit.

      According to current theory, our sun at the end of its lifetime (5 billion years from now) will become a red giant and throw off its outer layers forming a planetary nebula, and then turn into a white dwarf.

      If, by chance the sun as a white dwarf is captured by another star's gravitation, it could draw off mass from that star and then go supernova.

      If the sun were to turn into a variable star or nova between now and white dwarf stage, it could very easily boil away the oceans. Some scientists think that the sun will gradually increase in luminosity and that earth will be unhabitable in a billion years.

      Alternatively, if a nearby star (25 light years away) were to go supernova, that would pretty much kill the ozone layer and the sun's UV would fry us.

      Some scientists think that there is no life in the universe because supernova are such large events in galaxies that as life gets started somewhere it probably gets wiped out by a nearby star going supernova.

      • Re:Still waiting... (Score:5, Informative)

        by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Monday September 06, 2004 @03:42AM (#10167180)
        Actually our sun does not have enough mass to go supernova. A star needs a mass about 1.4 times our own for it to go supernova, and this is called the Chandra Limit.

        Close: it's the Chandrasekhar Limit.

        It's not the star, but the core of the star that needs to exceed 1.4 solar masses. The Sun will eventually run out of hydrogen in its core, and fusion will end. The core will then be unsupported against its weight, and will contract and heat up dramatically. The increased heat will trigger nuclear fusion of helium, then the Sun switches on again. While the core's heating up, the increased temperature makes the outer layers balloon out to a huge volume, forming the red giant.

        It's the core that's interesting, though. Eventually the helium runs out too, and we have a very dense gas of carbon. It contracts and heats up, but the Sun isn't big enough to reach carbon-burning temperatures. So the core can't support itself by burning to produce heat, and instead collapses until it's supported by 'degeneracy pressure' resulting from the fact that in quantum mechanics, no two electrons can occupy the same state.

        The Chandrasekhar limit is the maximum mass that can be supported this way, and it's 1.4 solar masses. Get above that mass, the core of the dead star collapses, FAST. The next state down is the neutron star, held up by degeneracy between neutrons rather than electrons. All that matter falling at very high speed hits a core of hard neutronium and the fun starts. Lots and lots and lots of energy has got to go somewhere... the result being a star-shattering kaboom.

      • Some scientists think that the sun will gradually increase in luminosity and that earth will be unhabitable in a billion years.

        Uninhabitable!? Oh my god, oh my god! What will we do?!

        Wait, wait... whew, a billion years. I thought you said a million years.
  • The rate of occurrence of supernovae in our own galaxy is now reasonably well determined to be one every 25 years. Supernova remnants in our own Galaxy and nearby galaxies are theoretically observable for over a million years.
    • "Supernova remnants in our own Galaxy and nearby galaxies are theoretically observable for over a million years."

      Something doesn't sound right... perhaps I am misinterpretting "remnants".

      But if SN 2004 dj is 11 million light years away, would not the event have happened 11 million light years ago? Not just a million?

  • Did you mean Suprnova? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 06, 2004 @12:40AM (#10166585)
    You know there's something seriously wrong when you type in Supernova in Google and it asks you "Did you mean : Suprnova " ?
  • Looks like they goofed in one of the images, though--the arrow points to a different bright spot on the before-and-after [hubblesite.org] image than it does on the main [hubblesite.org] and annotated [hubblesite.org] images.

    Look better. The two last images point to the same place. See the "small" galaxy or whatever at the bottom of the pointed supernova on the two last photos pointed on the quote. They're the same as the big one pointed on the first one, the photo has only been zoomed to that area.
  • ... how rare this is. The last real supernova was in the constellation Monoceros in the 1980s, and it was the first one since the invention of the telescope. That makes this the second.
    • ... how rare this is. The last real supernova was in the constellation Monoceros in the 1980s, and it was the first one since the invention of the telescope. That makes this the second.

      I'm assuming you refer to 1987A, though it was not in Monoceros. No, it was not the last real supernova. It was the last one that was near enough to be visible to the naked eye, there have been lots since then, they just tend to be rather far and so dim.

      This is brighter than most, which is why it's interesting, but nowhere
  • There was an interesting article on spacedaily.com (The case against Hubble) [spacedaily.com] which proposes that 2 new cheaper modern telescopes could be built for the price of "repairing" hubble.. I was in favour, until I heard about the costs.. Its had a damn good run, and will continue to do good science, but its like an old car that is costing more and more to put through its MOT each year..

  • Saeed's smarmy dig about this week's ISS EVA and the risk of a Hubble mission is wrongheaded. A Hubble repair mission is riskier than an ISS mission precisely because the crew can't shelter in the ISS if damage to the Shuttle precludes its safe reentry. EVA wasn't part of that decision.

  • Quoth the submitter:


    Their mission? Install three antennas and replace a 2-foot-square Russian pump panel. But of course, because it isn't a part or our Mission to Mars, it is still too dangerous work on the Hubble Telescope, which after all, is only used for science."

    OK, pay attention people. The ISS spacewalk presents very little risk of a dead (astro|cosmo)naut - at worst the guy turns around and goes back into the ISS.

    A shuttle mission to the ISS has a fallback position if the shuttle is found to

  • When supernova 1987A went off, the KAMIOKA [u-tokyo.ac.jp] detector in japan detected a burst (I think it was ~10) neutrinos. With new detectors [queensu.ca] online to detect different neutrino flavors, it will be interesting to see if there's any new physics to be found.
  • Still don't understand the bitterness regarding humans not being allowed to service Hubble. NASA already agreed to defer its Mars plan to send a robot to Hubble. Most of the world's population thinks human life is more valuable than a telescope. For all the bitching and whining the software engineering community did about astronauts dying on space shuttles, turning around and now saying humans should go out to Hubble shows absolutely no spine at all.

    Does anyone in our industry still have an opinion or i

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