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Astronomical News

Mythopoeika said:
Who said anything about hi-def film?
It'd be interesting to see the original.
Click to expand...

There's probably very little to be seen in terms of a visual image at that distance which would be impressive viewing. Otherwise I can't see why they wouldn't publish it.
 
I thought this was an April Fool's joke, but it was posted yesterday:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/spa...ed-star-has-an-almost-pure-oxygen-atmosphere/

Newly Discovered Star Has an Almost Pure Oxygen Atmosphere
A newly discovered star is unlike any ever found. With an outermost layer of 99.9 percent pure oxygen, its atmosphere is the most oxygen-rich in the known universe. Heck, it makes Earth's meager 21 percent look downright suffocating.

The strange stellar oddity is a radically new type of white dwarf star, and was discovered by a team of Brazilian astronomers led by Kepler de Souza Oliveira at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. The star is unique in the known pool of 32,000 white dwarf stars, and is the only known star of any kind with an almost pure oxygen atmosphere. The new white dwarf has a mouthful of a name—SDSSJ124043.01+671034.68—but has been nicknamed 'Dox' (pronounced Dee-Awks) by Kepler's team. The discovery was reported today in a paper in the journal Science.
Click to expand...
 
Super-bright new galaxy discovered orbiting the Milky Way by British astronomers
The galaxy is the Milky Way's fourth-largest satellite, and is as bright as 160,000 Suns
Doug Bolton

British astronomers have discovered an extremely bright dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way.
The latest addition to our area of space has been called the Crater 2 dwarf, and it lies around 380,000 light years away from Earth.

Gabriel Torrealba, Sergey Koposov, Vasily Belokurov and Mike Irwin, all from Cambridge University, made the remarkable discovery by analysing images taken by the VLT Survey Telescope in the high mountains of northern Chile.
In a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the team shed light on the details of the new galaxy.
Although it's not visible to human eyes, Crater 2 is enormous - it's the fourth-largest satellite of the Milky Way, our home galaxy which has more than 30 smaller galaxies circling around it.

Individual stars within Crater 2 are visible from Earth, but the galaxy as a whole is too far away to take up a large place in the night sky.
If it were closer, it'd make an impressive spectacle. As reported by New Scientist, Carnegie Obervatories astronomer Josh Simon says Crater 2 is brighter than almost all of the orbiting galaxies found in the last decade - emitting 160,000 times as much light as the Sun.

It may seem odd that such a vast and bright galaxy eluded astronomers' telescopes for so long, but according to the Cambridge team, the stars which make up Crater 2 are more spread out than usual, making it seem slightly 'ghostly' and not quite as eye-catching as a denser formation.

Crater 2 is one of our neighbours for the time being, but it could fall in to the Milky Way at some point - that's how our giant galaxy formed in the first place.
Crater 2, along with the Crater globular star cluster and three smaller dwarf galaxies are believed to be part of a group which is beginning to fall into the Milky Way, a process which will take eons.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...overed-crater-2-dwarf-cambridge-a6985696.html
 
Hubble spots tiny moon orbiting dwarf planet Makemake

The Hubble space telescope has made another amazing discovery - a tiny moon circling the dwarf planet Makemake.

Makemake is only 870 miles wide, much smaller than planet Earth, and its newly discovered moon is just 100 miles across.

The team who found the moon says it was hard to spot because of how bright Makemake is.

The mini planet is part of the Kuiper belt, an area beyond Neptune that also includes Pluto.

And a couple of paragraphs more...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/36150207
 
Rare Mercury transit across the Sun
By CG_Mo | Posted: May 05, 2016

SPACE lovers can take advantage of a rare opportunity next week to see a celestial event that only takes place 13 times a century.
The transit of Mercury will see the elusive planet move across the face of the sun on Monday.

As the planet is too small to be seen using standard eclipse glasses, specialist equipment is needed - but this can be found at the Roseland Observatory in St Stephen where an open day will be held to allow people to see the event.
Roseland will have the biggest solar scope in the country operating (given clear skies) as well as a number of other special scopes showing different features of the Sun while monitoring the progress of Mercury's transit.

The background to the event will be explained throughout and in the event of cloud the observatory will be in contact with a remote telescope to show it on a big screen.
The open day will run from midday on Monday (May 9). More information at www.roselandobservatory.com.

WARNING: Do not attempt to view the event without specialist equipment and never look directly at the Sun as blindness can result.

http://www.westbriton.co.uk/Rare-Mercury-transit-Sun/story-29232008-detail/story.html




Read more: http://www.westbriton.co.uk/Rare-Mercury-transit-Sun/story-29232008-detail/story.html#ixzz47rDYe5tk
Follow us: @westbriton on Twitter | westbriton on Facebook
 
Mercury's journey across Sun under way

Skywatchers across the globe are observing Mercury transit the Sun, the little planet's third such pass of 14 it will make this century.
Mercury's sojourn between Earth and our star lasts from 11:12 until 18:42 GMT.
It will not make another transit until 2019 and then 2032.

The event is impossible - and dangerous - to view with the naked eye or binoculars, but astronomy groups worldwide are offering the chance view it through filtered telescopes.
Live views from space and ground telescopes are also available online.

They show Mercury as a tiny black circle, smaller but darker than many sunspots, slowly traversing the Sun's giant yellow disc.
[Map showing where transit can be seen.]
Etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36228327
 
I got a fantastically detailed shot of the Transit of Mercury!

IMG_20160510_133125.jpg
 
Sky at Night is on now, covering the Transit of Mercury. But it should be on iPlayer sometime after 8 pm, so I'll catch it then.
 
New Horizons delivers first data on post-Pluto object
NASA's pioneering spacecraft takes a new image of a tiny Kuiper Belt object that is orbiting the Sun way out past Pluto. Bill Condie reports.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/ne...il&utm_term=0_1df827744a-7fe134f050-112030445

180516_NHpastpluto_1.gif


NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is starting to send back information about an object in the Kuiper Belt orbiting the Sun at more than five billion kilometres.

The craft first imaged 1994 JR1 in November last year at a distance of 280 million kilometres. Then on 7-8 April, it took another look with its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) from a distance of about 111 million kilometres.

NASA scientists say the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) is just 145 kilometres wide.

Simon Porter, a New Horizons science team member from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Colorado, said the observations contain several valuable findings.

180516_NHpastpluto_1.gif
The first two of the 20 observations that New Horizons made of 1994 JR1 in April 2016. The Kuiper Belt object is the bright moving dot indicated by the arrow. The dots that do not move are background stars. The moving feature in the top left is an internal camera reflection (a kind of selfie) caused by illumination by a very bright star just outside of LORRI's field of viewCredit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
“Combining the November 2015 and April 2016 observations allows us to pinpoint the location of JR1 to within 1,000 kilometres, far better than any small KBO,” he said.

The data had already allowed scientists to dismiss an earlier theory that the KBO was orbiting Pluto.

The team has also determined that JR1 rotates once every 5.4 hours for one JR1 day.

“That’s relatively fast for a KBO,” said John Spencer, also from SwRI.

“This is all part of the excitement of exploring new places and seeing things never seen before.”

New Horizons has a possible 20 KBOs to take a closer look at over the next few years if NASA approves a mission extension.

Bill Condie is news editor of Cosmos.
Click to expand...
 
Summer Solstice 2016: When is the longest day of the year? What is the ‘Strawberry Moon’?
This year’s solstice coincides with the Strawberry Moon – a once-in-a-lifetime occurence
Peter Yeung, Siobhan Fenton

The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, a day falling around late June when there are approximately 17 hours of light.
The name comes from the Latin solstitium meaning “sun stands still”. It happens because the sun stops heading north at the Tropic of Cancer and then returns back southwards.
In the northern hemisphere this means the days begin to get shorter.

But 2016 is a special year, because the solstice coincides with the Strawberry Moon, a once-in-a-lifetime occurence.
What is the Strawberry Moon?
It is a full moon, which occurs in June, named by early Native American tribes. It is a full moon like any other, but marks the beginning of the strawberry season. The two events coincide once every 70 years.

When is the summer solstice?
In the northern hemisphere, it can fall on different dates from year to year, between 20 and 22 June.
In 2016, it's on Monday 20 June. The sun will rise at 4.45am and sunset will happen at 10.34pm.

etc...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...strawberry-full-moon-stonehenge-a7089941.html

Well, I have to say, I've never heard of a Strawberry moon before.
And as I'm 70 now, I don't expect to see the next one, assuming I do see the one tomorrow!
 
New Dwarf Planet Discovered Far Beyond Pluto's Orbit
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | July 11, 2016 02:01pm ET

Pluto isn't quite as lonely as scientists had thought.

Astronomers have discovered another dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy objects beyond Neptune. But this newfound world, dubbed 2015 RR245, is much more distant than Pluto, orbiting the sun once every 700 Earth years, scientists said. (Pluto completes one lap around the sun every 248 Earth years.) You can see an animation of the new dwarf planet's orbit here.

"The icy worlds beyond Neptune trace how the giant planets formed and then moved out from the sun," discovery team member Michele Bannister, of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said in a statement. "They let us piece together the history of our solar system." [Meet the Solar System's Dwarf Planets]

"But almost all of these icy worlds are painfully small and faint; it's really exciting to find one that's large and bright enough that we can study it in detail," Bannister added.

dwarf-planet-RR24.jpg

Rendering of the orbit of the newfound dwarf planet RR245 (orange line), which scientists say is the 18th largest object in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune.
Credit: Alex Parker/OSSOS team

The exact size of 2015 RR245 is not yet known, but the researchers think it's about 435 miles (700 kilometers) wide. Pluto is the largest resident of the Kuiper Belt, with a diameter of 1,474 miles (2,371 km).

The research team first spotted 2015 RR245 in February of this year, while poring over images that the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii took in September 2015 as part of the ongoing Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS).

"There it was on the screen — this dot of light moving so slowly that it had to be at least twice as far as Neptune from the sun," Bannister said.

OSSOS has discovered more than 500 objects beyond Neptune's orbit, but 2015 RR245 is the first dwarf planet that the survey has found, the scientists said.

Dwarf planets are massive enough to be crushed into spheres by their own gravity, but they have not "cleared their neighborhood" of other objects, which differentiates them from "normal" planets such as Earth and Saturn. This definition, which was devised by the International Astronomical Union in 2006, led to Pluto's controversial reclassification as a dwarf planet.

Astronomers are still working out the details of 2015 RR245's highly elliptical orbit, but the object appears to come as close to the sun as 34 astronomical units (AU), and farther away than 120 AU. (One AU is the average Earth-sun distance — about 93 million miles, or 150 million km.)

2015 RR245 — which will get a catchier, official name at some point — will make its closest approach to the sun in 2096, the researchers said.

Other confirmed dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt region include Pluto, Eris, Haumea and Makemake. Several other objects in this distant realm, including Sedna, Quaoar and 2007 OR10, probably meet the dwarf-planet criteria as well, scientists have said.

http://www.space.com/33387-dwarf-planet-discovery-2015-rr245.html
 
Vardoger said:
2015 RR245 — which will get a catchier, official name at some point —
Click to expand...
At what point do we stop with mythological naming and just go with "2015 RR2245" or whatever for the name?

/All the really scary sci-fi planet names are things like "LV-426".
 
British partnership to send low-cost satellites to Moon's orbit
12 July 2016

A British partnership has announced plans for low-cost lunar missions and space exploration.
Goonhilly Earth Station in Cornwall and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd plan to send a "mother ship" to transport satellites beyond Earth's orbit.
It is being called a "new model of low-cost, high-value, space exploration".
The SSTL-GES Lunar Pathfinder team wants the project to appeal to organisations worldwide, including space agencies.

SSTL's executive chairman, Sir Martin Sweeting, said he hoped the project would address the high cost of sending satellites to space - "a common barrier to the international development and exploration of our local solar system".
Goonhilly Earth Station is upgrading one of its antennas as part of the development of a commercial deep space network and will provide a mission operations centre in Cornwall.

Dr Tamela Maciel, from the National Space Centre in Leicester, said the project would provide exciting opportunities.
"It would be exciting to see the science that's coming out of it, but also the educational possibilities.
"Imagine if you're a university student and you get to work on developing a mini satellite that's going to be sent to the Moon...
"How amazing would that be to put on your CV?"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-36774579
 
More on the Lunar pathfinder:
Goonhilly to be at centre at new mission to the moon

5271427

Lunar pathfinder spacecraft: photo SSTL

Goonhilly is to be at the centre of a new mission to the moon, timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo landings.
A team at Goonhilly Earth Station will track a spacecraft being built in the UK, that is due to launch in 2019.
Staff will be at the helm of a dedicated mission operations centre, with one of the site's famous antennas - affectionately referred to as "dishes" in the area - being upgraded into a deep space "ground asset."

Goonhilly has teamed up with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and the European Space Agency for the project, which marks the world’s first commercial deep space mission.
This will see 80kg of tiny satellites, known as nano-satellites, taken up into space on behalf of paying customers.
Each customer will be charged around £1 million per kilogram for the privilege of having their satellite taken into the moon's orbit, with a communication link then being provided back down to Goonhilly.
The satellites will be transported in the spacecraft, known as Lunar Pathfinder, before they are released into space. Some of them will remain in orbit, while others may land on the surface of the moon.

The team at Surrey have already begun designing a series of lunar communication satellites that will go beyond the Earth's orbit for the first time.
A number of customers have already show interest, including international space agencies, governments and research organisations.
Once enough nano-satellites have been "booked," Surrey's engineers will start to build the Lunar Pathfinder mothership.

The first planned launch will be via an Indian rocket that has already successfully transported spacecraft to the moon and it is hoped to follow this up with other missions, approximately every two years.

Sir Martin Sweeting, executive chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, said cost was a "common barrier" to further exploration of the solar system around the Earth, adding: "The Lunar Pathfinder missions will provide the low cost support infrastructure that allows customers to focus on the science and business aspects of their missions.”

http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/14614253.Goonhilly_to_be_at_centre_at_new_mission_to_the_moon/

I just hope I live to see it!
 
South African super-telescope reveals distant galaxies and black holes
At only a quarter of its eventual capacity, the MeerKat radio telescope captures 1,300 galaxies in tiny corner of universe where only 70 were known before
Agence France-Presse
Sunday 17 July 2016 02.18 BST

Even operating at a quarter of its eventual capacity, South Africa’s MeerKat radio telescope showed off its phenomenal power on Saturday, revealing 1,300 galaxies in a tiny corner of the universe where only 70 were known before.
The image released on Saturday was the first from MeerKat where 16 dishes were formally commissioned the same day.
MeerKat’s full contingent of 64 receptors will be integrated next year into a multi-nation square kilometre array (SKA) which is is set to become the world’s most powerful radio telescope.

The images produced by MeerKat “are far better than we could have expected”, the chief scientist of the SKA in South Africa, Fernando Camilo, said at the site of the dishes near the small town of Carnarvon, 600 kilometres north of Cape Town.
This “means that this telescope, as is today only one quarter of the way down (to its full contingent), is already the best radio telescope in the southern hemisphere,” Camilo told AFP.

Video:

When fully up and running in the 2020s, the SKA will comprise a forest of 3,000 dishes spread over an area of a square kilometre (0.4 square miles) across remote terrain around several countries to allow astronomers to peer deeper into space in unparallelled detail.

It will have a discovery potential 10,000 times greater than the most advanced modern instruments and will explore exploding stars, black holes, dark energy and traces of the universe’s origins some 14 billion years ago.
MeerKat is being built in the remote and arid southwest of the Karoo region of South Africa which offers prime conditions for astronomers.
It will serve as one of the two main clusters of SKA. The other will be in Australia.

Some 200 scientists, engineers and technicians working in collaboration with industry, local and foreign universities have developed the technologies, hardware and software systems for MeerKat.

The South African minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor, said “this the first time that an African group of countries will host global science infrastructure of this character.”
“It’s a first for us as Africa and also it’s a first for the world because the world hasn’t done this in Africa,” said the minister. “We are building a global infrastructure for the world.”
“We can now expect when the 64 dishes are in place next year, it will be the best telescope, not only in the southern hemisphere but in the world,” said Pandor.
More than 20 countries are members of the SKA, including Britain which hosts the headquarters of the project.

Despite its slowing economy, South Africa, which hosts the bulk of the SKA project, has so far invested 3 bn rand ($205m) into the telescope project, funded mainly from the public purse and science research partners.

Already some 500 scientific groups from 45 countries have booked slots to use the MeerKat array between next year and 2022.
“What this will do is bring to South African and world astronomers the most astonishing and profoundly powerful instrument ever used before in radio astronomy,” the SKA South Africa project director, Rob Adam, said.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...uper-radio-telescope-far-better-than-expected
 
I guess we should be happy they didn't name it The Really Frigging Huge Telescope.
 
Moon Express cleared for lunar landing
  • 3 August 2016
  • From the sectionBusiness
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_90660126_jade.rabbit.cnsa.jpg
Image copyrightCCTV
Image captionChina's Jade Rabbit was the most recent visitor to the moon in 2013
Moon Express has become the first private firm to win US approval for an unmanned mission to the moon.

The two-week mission was given the go-ahead by the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation.

The plan is to send a suitcase-sized lander to the moon in late 2017.

The lander, which is not yet completed, will be carried on a rocket made by Rocket Lab, a start-up firm which has not launched any commercial missions.

Science experiments and some commercial cargo will be carried on the one-way trip to the lunar surface.

Moon Express also plans to beam pictures back to the Earth.

What if you could mine the moon?

"The Moon Express 2017 mission approval is a landmark decision by the US government and a pathfinder for private sector commercial missions beyond Earth's orbit," said Moon Express co-founder Bob Richards.

His partner, Naveen Jain, says the company is keen to explore the possibilities of mining on the moon.

"In the immediate future we envision bringing precious resources, metals and moon rocks back to Earth," he said.

Mr Jain, was born in India, but moved to the US in 1979 where he worked in the technology industry and founded technology firms.

Co-founder Bob Richards is a Canadian-born space entrepreneur, and the firm's third founder is entrepreneur Barney Pell.

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Media captionAlastair Leithead gets a look at the prototype Lunar Express lander
Moon race
Moon Express is one of the teams competing for the Lunar X Prize, which was set up in 2007.

There is a $20m prize, funded by Google, for the first commercial group to land a probe on the moon.

So far only government missions have flown spacecraft beyond the Earth's orbit, with the Chinese completing the most recent visits to the moon.

In December 2013 China landed a rover on the moon as part of its Chang'e-3 mission - the first "soft" landing on the Moon since 1976.

Other private companies are expected to follow Moon Express and seek permission to fly to the Moon.

Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX plans to go even further, with a Mars mission in 2018.
Click to expand...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36970326
 
‘Our solar system just got weirder’: Bizarre new planet with offbeat orbit stumps scientists
Published time: 11 Aug, 2016 18:09
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57acb274c46188fe668b457e.jpg

The Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) 1 telescope in Hawaii which spotted the mini planet Niku. © University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy / Rob Ratkowski

A tiny, mystery planet located on the far side of Neptune is breaking all the rules and leaving scientists baffled.
Niku, named after Chinese word for ‘Rebel’, has a diameter of just 200km (120 miles), is 160,000-times smaller than Neptune and behaves like no other similarly-sized planet in the Solar System.

This trans-Neptunian object orbits the Sun in a retrograde direction, meaning it rotates in the opposite direction to the Sun’s rotation. The angle it takes for this unusual orbit is at 110 degrees to the flat plane of the Solar System, on which other planets move around the Sun.

And that means it’s currently above the plane and rising higher but will eventually cross over, dropping below the plane as it continues its orbit. The fact that its orbit is retrograde was likely caused by a collision with an unknown mass or a gravitational pull by a mystery force.

“Angular momentum forces everything to have that one spin direction all the same way,” said Michele Bannister, an astronomer from Queen’s University, Belfast in Northern Ireland. “It’s the same thing with a spinning top, every particle is spinning the same direction.”

More text at link...

https://www.rt.com/viral/355581-neptune-orbit-planet-scientists/
 
Star snapped before and after nova explosion
By Jonathan WebbScience reporter, BBC News
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_90826149_9cbe49cb-b1e3-4131-b58f-52fda19ec4ce.png
Image copyrightJ SKOWRON / WARSAW UNIVERSITY OBSERVATORY
Image captionThe nova eruption took place in May 2009
Astronomers have captured rare images of a tiny star before, during and after it exploded as a "classical nova".

In this type of binary system, a white dwarf sucks gas from a much bigger partner star until it blows up - about every 10,000 to one million years.

Now, a Polish team has caught one in the act using a telescope in Chile.

The observations, reported in Nature, were made as part of a long-running sky survey that was originally aimed at detecting dark matter.

The consistent stream of images snapped for that project, the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, allowed the researchers to go back and see what the star system looked like before the explosion brought it to their attention in May 2009.

Even though it is 20,000 light-years away - a terribly faint pinprick of light barely visible among brighter stars, even in magnified images - this was a rare opportunity to study the build-up and aftermath of a classical nova.

_90826148_77c7f8c0-8a46-4710-8ab4-10d2d32c007d.png
Image copyrightK ULACZYK / WARSAW UNIVERSITY OBSERVATORY
Image captionThis illustration shows the white dwarf, stealing gas from its partner star and exploding
"Thanks to our long-term observations, we observed the nova a few years before and a few years after the explosion," Przemek Mróz, the study's first author and a PhD student at the Warsaw University Astronomical Observatory, told the BBC.

"This is very unusual, because generally nova only attract attention when they are very bright - when they are in eruption."

Hypothetical hibernation
These violent but poorly understood events begin with a white dwarf, the dead remnant of an average star like our Sun, is locked in tight orbit with a regular, active star.

type Ia supernova, which starts with a similar situation but destroys the white dwarf completely in a much bigger explosion.

Mr Mróz's key observations came from studying the light emitted by the system - which is an indication of the mass being stolen by the white dwarf - before and after its dramatic brightness spike in 2009.

"What we observed is that before the eruption, the mass transfer rate in the binary was very low and was unstable. After the eruption, it appears that the mass transfer is much higher and is stable," Mr Mróz said.

As a test bed for our theories of how these explosions work - this really is fantastic
Prof Christian Knigge, University of Southampton
"That means that the  explosion we observed changed the properties of the binary."

In fact, Mr Mróz and his colleagues argue that their results support a "hibernation" model for classical novae. This means that during the lengthy wait between explosions, the system goes almost completely dark and the white dwarf stops stealing gas altogether.

That model predicts a slow, sputtering transfer of matter between the stars before the explosion, and a relatively fast and bright transfer afterwards - which is precisely what the Polish researchers believe they have captured.

Not put to bed
Other astronomers are less convinced.

"The thing is still just cooling down at the moment - it's not yet steady. So we don't yet know what the long-term brightness is going to be, post outburst, because really we're still seeing the end of the outburst," commented Christian Knigge from the University of Southampton.

Like any scientist, anywhere - he wants to see more data.

_90820754_r1220086.jpg
Image copyrightSCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Image captionThe 1.3m Warsaw telescope is part of the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile
"This is very circumstantial," Prof Knigge told BBC News.

But he added: "As observations, as a test bed for our theories of how these explosions work - this really is fantastic.

"We can really measure what the brightness and the conditions were before the eruption; we can use this to inform how we model the eruption; we have a nice measure of how long it takes to decline - and we're going to keep following this.

"I do think this data is going to shed light on classical nova theory - but from my perspective it's too early to claim that this is a clear case of a hibernating system that's now erupted."
Click to expand...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37098317
 
Bigphoot2 posted:
Star snapped before and after nova explosion
By Jonathan WebbScience reporter, BBC News
The nova eruption took place in May 2009
Astronomers have captured rare images of a tiny star before, during and after it exploded as a "classical nova".

In this type of binary system, a white dwarf sucks gas from a much bigger partner star until it blows up - about every 10,000 to one million years.

Now, a Polish team has caught one in the act using a telescope in Chile.

The observations, reported in Nature, were made as part of a long-running sky survey that was originally aimed at detecting dark matter.

The consistent stream of images snapped for that project, the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, allowed the researchers to go back and see what the star system looked like before the explosion brought it to their attention in May 2009.

Even though it is 20,000 light-years away - a terribly faint pinprick of light barely visible among brighter stars, even in magnified images - this was a rare opportunity to study the build-up and aftermath of a classical nova.

"Thanks to our long-term observations, we observed the nova a few years before and a few years after the explosion," Przemek Mróz, the study's first author and a PhD student at the Warsaw University Astronomical Observatory, told the BBC.

"This is very unusual, because generally nova only attract attention when they are very bright - when they are in eruption."

These violent but poorly understood events begin with a white dwarf, the dead remnant of an average star like our Sun, is locked in tight orbit with a regular, active star.

Mr Mróz's key observations came from studying the light emitted by the system - which is an indication of the mass being stolen by the white dwarf - before and after its dramatic brightness spike in 2009.

"What we observed is that before the eruption, the mass transfer rate in the binary was very low and was unstable. After the eruption, it appears that the mass transfer is much higher and is stable," Mr Mróz said.

As a test bed for our theories of how these explosions work - this really is fantastic
Prof Christian Knigge, University of Southampton
"That means that the  explosion we observed changed the properties of the binary."

In fact, Mr Mróz and his colleagues argue that their results support a "hibernation" model for classical novae. This means that during the lengthy wait between explosions, the system goes almost completely dark and the white dwarf stops stealing gas altogether.

That model predicts a slow, sputtering transfer of matter between the stars before the explosion, and a relatively fast and bright transfer afterwards - which is precisely what the Polish researchers believe they have captured.

Other astronomers are less convinced.
"The thing is still just cooling down at the moment - it's not yet steady. So we don't yet know what the long-term brightness is going to be, post outburst, because really we're still seeing the end of the outburst," commented Christian Knigge from the University of Southampton.
Like any scientist, anywhere - he wants to see more data.

"This is very circumstantial," Prof Knigge told BBC News.
But he added: "As observations, as a test bed for our theories of how these explosions work - this really is fantastic.
"We can really measure what the brightness and the conditions were before the eruption; we can use this to inform how we model the eruption; we have a nice measure of how long it takes to decline - and we're going to keep following this.
"I do think this data is going to shed light on classical nova theory - but from my perspective it's too early to claim that this is a clear case of a hibernating system that's now erupted."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37098317

I saw this piece earlier, but didn't twig that 'snapped' in the headline meant 'photographed'! Doh!
I assumed 'snapped' was some peculiar activity of the star! :rolleyes:
 
However the chinese just finished their giant telescope. Though that is for radio waves, which might be less useful here.
 
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