Amateur astronomer captures rare first light of massive exploding star

[Judi Lynn]

(21 February 2018 - W. M. Keck Observatory) Thanks to lucky snapshots taken by an amateur astronomer in Argentina, scientists have obtained their first view of the initial burst of light from the explosion of a massive star.

During tests of a new camera, Víctor Buso captured images of a distant galaxy before and after the supernova's "shock breakout" – when a supersonic pressure wave from the exploding core of the star hits and heats gas at the star’s surface to a very high temperature, causing it to emit light and rapidly brighten.

To date, no one has been able to capture the "first optical light" from a normal supernova (one not associated with a gamma-ray or x-ray burst), since stars explode seemingly at random in the sky and the light from shock breakout is fleeting. The new data provide important clues to the physical structure of the star just before its catastrophic demise and to the nature of the explosion itself.



"Professional astronomers have long been searching for such an event," said UC Berkeley astronomer Alex Filippenko, who followed up the discovery with observations at the Lick and Keck observatories that proved critical to a detailed analysis of explosion, called SN 2016gkg. "Observations of stars in the first moments they begin exploding provide information that cannot be directly obtained in any other way."

More:
http://www.spacenewsfeed.com/index.php/news/825-amateur-astronomer-captures-rare-first-light-of-massive-exploding-star

[Judi Lynn]

1. An amateur astronomer testing a new camera happens to catch a supernova as it's being born

FEBRUARY 21, 2018 9:45 pm


Peering at a distant galaxy, an amateur astronomer in Argentina managed to capture a star in the act of going supernova. The chances of this discovery, scientists say, are 1-in-a-million at best.

This lucky find, described in the journal Nature, offers the first images of the sudden brightening caused by a shock in the star’s core — a process that had been theorized but never observed.

“This is the first confirmation of the existence of this phase, which is really in agreement with the models,” said lead author Melina Bersten, an astrophysicist at the Instituto de Astrofisica de La Plata in Argentina.

. . .

SN 2016gkg was spotted in September 2016 by study coauthor Victor Buso, an amateur astronomer based out of Rosario, Argentina. Buso had been testing a new camera on his 16-inch telescope by aiming it at spiral galaxy NGC 613, which lies roughly 80 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor.

More:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/go-for-launch/la-sci-sn-supernova-birth-camera-20180221-story.html

[Judi Lynn]

2. The World's Luckiest Photographer May Have Proved Astrophysicists Right

By Brandon Specktor, Senior Writer | February 22, 2018 02:35pm ET

On a September night in Argentina, amateur astronomer Victor Buso took his camera outside, mounted it on a 16-inch telescope and trained it on a spiral galaxy some 80 million light-years from Earth. Buso was just trying to test out his new camera. He didn't expect to win the cosmic lottery — or to prove scientists right about a long-held theory about how supernovas occur.

While photographing the NGC 613 galaxy over the course of about an hour, Buso inadvertently captured several images of a star moving through the first visible stages of a supernova — the explosive (and visibly bright) death of a supermassive star. In one photo, the space below the spiral galaxy looked seemingly empty. In the next, a bright blast of light had appeared.

Such photos of emerging supernovas have never been captured before, and with good reason; according to astronomers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de La Plata in Argentina, the chances of randomly catching a star going supernova are about 1 in 10 million at best. [The Best Space Photos Ever]

Buso quickly shared his photographic findings with astronomers, and, by the next morning, telescopes around the world took aim at the dying star.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/61843-amateur-first-visible-supernova-photo.html