SAN FRANCISCO: The faint light of a dying star that exploded 21 million light years away, the closest supernova of its type discovered in decades, will reach its peak viewing Thursday and Friday night, which is even visible for amateurs with a pair of binoculars and a clear night sky, Xinhua news reports scientists as saying.
When stars reach the end of their life, they collapse in on themselves and trigger an explosion that can outshine an entire galaxy, which is called supernova.
The supernova, labeled PTF11kly, involved a white dwarf only 1. 4 times the mass of sun and occurred in the Pinwheel galaxy 21 million light years away.
According to Peter Nugent, an astronomer and senior staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, most of the supernovae are more than a billion light years away and are too faint to be visible for amateurs and general observers, and astronomers haven’t seen one this close more than two decades.
In a clear night sky, anyone with a decent pair of binoculars or telescopes more than three inches will see this supernova as a bright white star which is located in the constellation Ursa Major and forms an equilateral triangle heading north with the last two stars of the handle of the Big Dipper, Nugent explained in a YouTube video.
The supernova, first discovered on Aug 23 in an image sent from Palomar Observatory near San Diego, is a type 1a supernova, the kind used by astronomers to measure distances of far-off galaxies and the expansion of the universe under the influence of dark energy.
This type of supernova last occurred in 1972.