Comments on: Hubble snaps a dead star on the rise

By: Itty Bitty SuperNovae « AstroGeek

Itty Bitty SuperNovae « AstroGeek — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:39:55 +0000

[...] on Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait has a post up talking about SN 2006bc. This wasn’t a particularly spectacular supernova, like SN [...]

By: Patrik

Patrik — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:23:05 +0000

The PGC2005 catalogue has PGC 281862 at about the right place and with similar (at a glance) properties.

By: Barton Paul Levenson

Barton Paul Levenson — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:26:31 +0000

I know that there can be a tremendous amount of blowoff in a red giant’s solar wind, amounting to an appreciable fraction of its mass over time, but it’s hard to believe a star can go from 20 solar masses to 7 just by blowoff. What are other people saying about the model in this paper, or is it too recent?

By: ddemartin

ddemartin — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:29:11 +0000

I think there’s a little of confusion.
Even if the Smartt’s work is to study the precursor of supernovae, this Hubble image pictures the supernova in its late stage. Indeed, the supernova was discovered in March 2006, while the Hubble image was shotted in October 2006.
So, the image shows the SN when it was actually decreasing in brightness.
Davide

By: Astrogeek

Astrogeek — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:48:18 +0000

This was a type II (core collapse) supernova. Is this particular supernova one of the ‘lightweight’ ( < 9Msol ) ones they found, or is that just one of the overall conclusions of the study?

By: slang

slang — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:10:04 +0000

From the linked ESA article:

One atypical feature of this Hubble image is the view of supernova SN 2006bc taken when its brightness was on the decrease.

(emphasis mine). BA, you wrote that it caught the supernova increasing in brightness, which would indeed be pretty awesome. Which is it? Increasing or decaying brightness?

By: QuasarTimes

QuasarTimes — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:03:58 +0000

A star becomes a supernova when it ceases nuclear fusion in its core. This can be referred to as a “dead” star.

By: Mapnut

Mapnut — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:46:05 +0000

What am I missing? I don’t understand what the “dead star” in the title refers to.

By: NGC 3314

NGC 3314 — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:36:35 +0000

No, 2397A is 7 arcminutes to the south and way outside the HST field (which is shown just about with south at the top). This face-on spiral is surely uncatalogued to date (it shows up only as a poorly resolved smudge on the digitized ESO/SRC survey photographs). And it’s in the wrong part of the sky (declination -69) to appear in the Sloan survey.

By: QuasarTimes

QuasarTimes — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:33:32 +0000

Ok, I’m pretty sure it’s NGC 2466.

By: QuasarTimes

QuasarTimes — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:07:56 +0000

Scratch that, it’s way too close to be that.

By: QuasarTimes

QuasarTimes — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:05:54 +0000

“I was just wondering if anyone (Phil in particular) knew the name of the galaxy that can be seen to the right of the image. It looks like we’re getting a pretty much top down look at it’s spirals, and it looks amazing. Any bigger picture of it on its own.”

Isn’t it 2397A? I could be wrong but it’s all I could find near it.

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:30:24 +0000

I was just wondering if anyone (Phil in particular) knew the name of the galaxy that can be seen to the right of the image. It looks like we’re getting a pretty much top down look at it’s spirals, and it looks amazing. Any bigger picture of it on its own.

The link to the larger image at the Hubble website isn’t working (for me at least) so I can’t check there.

Cheers
Scott.

By: Chip

Chip — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:04:36 +0000

I didn’t find a paper though I did find that Stephen Smartt does research in the detection of precursor stars and/or “Supernovae Progenitors”. He contributed to the article “A giant outburst two years before the core-collapse of a massive star” published in Nature in 2007.

By: Dan Gerhards

Dan Gerhards — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:58:01 +0000

This is one of the best pictures we have of a supernova in progress. It’s not as bright as the *whole* galaxy, but it’s still awfully bright:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap000312.html

By: Chip

Chip — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:48:47 +0000

BlondeReb3 writes: “I wish someone had caught a photo of the star at its brightest. I would like to see what it looked like in the galaxy.”

If Phil’s conjecture is correct, you’re probably thinking of this star when it initially exploded as a much more massive star. This might have happened long before humans were looking at the sky, however I would guess (or hope) that someone is also researching old photographic plates of this galaxy. Some very old observatory photos (1890s through 1930s for example) are remarkably detailed. It would be interesting to see if the star can be spotted.

By: Alan

Alan — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:00:23 +0000

“The astronomers who made this study of supernova host galaxies have made an amazing discovery: stars as lightweight as 7 times the mass of the Sun can explode! That’s lower than previously thought…”

But, but, but….that means they’ve found evidence that an hypothesis in their scientific field might need updating….but….scientists don’t do that, right? they just cover up evidence that conflicts with their “belief” ….

Oh wait, that’s in the Bizarro universe that exists in the minds of Kent Hovind and Ben Stein. In this universe, it’s cool to see people still finding things we need to learn more about.

By: BlondeReb3

BlondeReb3 — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:54:59 +0000

I wish someone had caught a photo of the star at its brightest. I would like to see what it looked like in the galaxy.

And some supernovae can be as bright as the galaxy itself? I don’t even know how to react to that. That would be amazing!

By: QuasarTimes

QuasarTimes — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:48:50 +0000

That’s why astronomers would make excellent maids. I’m intrigued by Phil’s theory that the star could have previously been much bigger and in fact it wasn’t a smaller star that exploded in the first place. I’ll have a look and see what I can find.

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:04:06 +0000

I have no idea how you manage to see what it is that you see. All I see when I look at that spiral is a collection of bright stars and gases and whatnots.

How do you feel about dusting, Phil? I mean, with your eyes and attention to detail and ability to see the minutest of particles, you could probably do an amazing job, and my house really could use a cleaning.