Word: supernovae
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Kirshner, a Harvard colleague, and two other scientists believe they have discovered the remnants of the first double supernova star ever observed, and evidence tells them that it may not be the only...
Unfortunately for Kirshner and his fellow astronomers, who hope to find answers to a variety of astronomical questions from studying these stellar explosions, observable supernovae do not occur very often. In fact, 1987 was the first time since 1604 that Earth dwellers witnessed an actual explosion close enough to the Earth to be seen with the naked eye, Kirshner said, thus making the event the first young supernova to be carefully analyzed with modern scientific equipment. Astronomers, including Kirshner, are still collecting data from the phenomenon, called 1987A...
Evidence leading to the hypothesis of a double supernova, however, was collected by Kirshner and his co-workers while examining the remnant of an ancient explosion, which took place more than 4000 years ago. Astronomical observers uncover about 20 of such stellar fossils, which are less useful than phenomena occuring more recently and closer to the Earth...
Working at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile last February, Kirshner says his team was taking pictures of the light emitted from supernova Puppis A, a remnant discovered in the 1950s, which has been studied "off and on" ever since. Astronomers usually study the light spectra from all sorts of astronomical bodies to learn about their physical and chemical characteristics, Kirshner says...
...noticed that chemicals released during the star's explosion which should have mixed together over the last four millenia were in fact still separated in space--as if they didn't have the time to mix yet. They discoved this by using several different filters when photographing the supernova, which bring out the separate bands of the elements, Kirshner says. "It still bears the imprint of" a more recent explosion than most data from Puppis A reveals...