Word: ophiuchus
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...next supernova to be seen by the naked eye happened only 32 years later, in 1604, in the constellation Ophiuchus, and its best-remembered witness was Brahe's former assistant Johannes Kepler. Unlike most supernovas, this one was seen before it reached maximum brightness, so Kepler's descriptions of the blazing star are of particular interest to astronomers. His observations would have been even more detailed and valuable had they been made with a telescope. Unfortunately, the star's timing was off. The supernova lighted the night skies just a scant five years before Galileo made the first documented telescopic...
...immense catalog of data gathered by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) was an ideal place to start. Although the satellite operated for only ten months in 1983, it sent back information on more than a quarter-million cosmic sources of infrared radiation. One of them was in the constellation Ophiuchus, some 520 light-years away. "What the IRAS survey indicated," says Team Astronomer Bruce Wilking of the University of Missouri, "was that this source was 40 degrees above absolute zero (-233 degreesC), extremely cold by our standards but warm enough by interstellar | standards that it led us to think this...