Artist impression of radiation from
an exploding star (depicted as squiggly white lines, detail at right)
lighting up a relatively dense shell of gas that had been shed by the
star in its last days.
Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF and Ofer Yaron, WIS.
The supernova SN 2013fs was
discovered, in a galaxy about 160 million light-years from Earth, on 6
October 2013 by scientists at the Palomar Observatory. Las Cumbres
Observatory provided early follow-up observations and obtained one of
the first light spectra of the event. Data from LCO followed the
luminosity of the supernova from the first hours through months after
the explosion.
LCO scientists Andy Howell and Iair Arcavi were part of a team of
researchers that used this vital early data to discover
previously-unknown characteristics of the massive stars which explode as
the most common type of supernova. Their work was published this week
in an article in Nature Physics. The full article is available here
A multi-observatory campaign, including Las Cumbres Observatory,
provided the earliest spectra that showed signatures of mass lost by the
star just before it exploded. The later observations established the
type of supernova as one of the most common. Together these two pieces
of evidence told scientists that even the most common supernova star
progenitors can have episodes where they lose a great quantity of mass
just before they explode. Dr. Arcavi summarized this discovery by saying
that “we have witnessed an exploding star that illuminated and then
destroyed its own wind”. He went on to describe the significance, “This
tells us that most massive stars signal their impending doom through
violent mass ejections. We still don’t fully understand how they do it,
but this is one way we might be able to predict supernovae before they
happen”.
This important discovery has received coverage in the press and you can follow the story in these articles:
Science Mag.: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/exploding-star-yields-its-secrets
Space.com: http://www.space.com/35689-supernova-baby-discovery-star-explosions.html
Astronomy.com: http://astronomy.com/news/2017/02/supernova-big-boom
Author: Sandy Seale
(Director of Development)
Source: Las Cumbres Observatory/News
