Word: supernova
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...standards, it could be one of the brightest stars in the sky when it peaks in intensity, perhaps as early as next week. (While it is clearly visible in the Southern Hemisphere, even Hawaii is too far north for much of a view.) The star will be the brightest supernova observed since 1604 and the only one visible to the naked eye since 1885. Says University of Chicago Astronomer W. David Arnett: "This is probably the most important thing that's happened in astronomy since 1604. It finally gives us a way of testing ideas about how stars and galaxies...
Realizing the importance of his discovery, Shelton moved quickly to contact the International Astronomical Union's telegram service in Cambridge, Mass., the world's clearinghouse for announcements of new comets, asteroids and other transient astronomical phenomena. Shelton was the first to report the supernova, but, according to Service Director Brian Marsden, a New Zealand amateur astronomer named Albert Jones also spotted it that night. By the end of the day the service had sent telegrams announcing the supernova, officially designated 1987A, to some 150 institutions around the world...
...says Astronomer Stan Woosley of the University of California at Santa Cruz, "everyone with anything to look with is looking at it." Every optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere is trained on 1987A; a newly launched Japanese satellite is scanning it for X rays emitted by the supernova's hot gases; the Solar Max satellite is looking for the gamma rays characteristic of very energetic explosions; and another spacecraft, the International Ultraviolet Explorer, has already made observations of the explosion's ultraviolet radiation. These indicate that the star's atmosphere, which astronomers have determined is exploding outward at a speed...
...star, began spewing out over a vast region of space, where they will form clouds of gas and dust that can coalesce into new stars and planets. Indeed, most of the elements abundant on earth today, except hydrogen, were cooked up in some star that became a supernova. Says Woosley: "The calcium in our bones, the iron in hemoglobin and the oxygen we all breathe came from explosions like this...
...first question astronomers asked: What kind of supernova is 1987A? There are two main types. A Type II explosion occurs when a massive star exhausts its nuclear fuel and collapses under its own weight. When its matter, falling in from all directions, meets at its center, a shock wave bounces back out in a tremendous explosion that blows apart the star's outermost layers. A Type I explosion occurs when a gravitationally powerful white dwarf star that is part of a binary star system draws gas from its nearby companion. When it accumulates too much, reaching a critical mass about...