Posted by Davin Flateau on 1 Jul 2005 at 10:38 am.
Filed under Astronomy.
On June 28, German amateur astronomer Wolfgang Kloehr reported discovering an exploded star in the famous Whirlpool Galaxy, M51. The British Astronomical Association reports that the supernova has brightened to magnitude 13.5 - putting it in reach of astrophotography and CCD imaging. If you have the means, it would be a great time to see if you can capture the event!
The supernova has been designated SN 2005cs, and can be found in the southern arm of the Whirlpool Galaxy, which is located in the constellation Canes Venatici, (the hunting dogs), under the handle of the Big Dipper. Hubble recently took this amazing picture of M51.
A supernova is the resulting explosion from a massive star collapsing on itself. The resulting energy outburst is incredible, outshining all the stars in its galaxy for a brief time. The explosion’s remnants might be a rapidly rotating neutron star called a pulsar, or even a black hole.
We often see supernova in other galaxies like this, but luckily for us, they’re rare here in the Milky Way. It would be a bad day for planet earth if one were to explode anywhere near our solar system. Astronomers at the University of Kansas determined a few years ago that a supernova would have to be within 26 light years of Earth to do massive damage to our ozone layer. Anyone have SPF 10,000 sunblock handy?
Heinrich Schmitt on 5 Jul 2005 at 4:02 am: 1
You can find the discovery images of SN 2005cs at
www.dsi-astronomie.de
regards
Heinrich
dflateau on 5 Jul 2005 at 9:54 am: 2
Fantastic images! Just about to post an aimge of the SN taken from Wichita last night….
Stars Over Kansas » Supernova 2005cs Image on 5 Jul 2005 at 3:51 pm: 3
[…] Deep Impact isn’t the only celestial explosion in the sky right now. As we reported last week, a new supernova designated SN2005cs has been discovered in M51, The Whirlpool Galaxy. Explorat […]
Tom’s Astronomy Blog » Blog Archive » Supernova 2005cs on 8 Jul 2005 at 4:09 pm: 4
[…] rt has a good post in it here, and Stars Over Kansas at Exploration Place has a post on it here. Martin Ratcliffe took a picture of it with a Televue refractor and an ST2000 XM CCD camera. Whil […]