supernova
March 27, 2016 8:20 PM Subscribe
The Early Flash Of An Exploding Star The brilliant flash of an exploding star’s shockwave—what astronomers call the “shock breakout”—has been captured for the first time in the optical wavelength or visible light by NASA's planet-hunter, the Kepler space telescope.
Wow. I feel like I've just completed a JRPG.
posted by ignignokt at 8:30 PM on March 27, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by ignignokt at 8:30 PM on March 27, 2016 [2 favorites]
“That is the puzzle of these results,” said Garnavich. “You look at two supernovae and see two different things. That’s maximum diversity.”
we don't know whyyyyyy
why, why why why-yy-yyyy
posted by curious nu at 8:36 PM on March 27, 2016
we don't know whyyyyyy
why, why why why-yy-yyyy
posted by curious nu at 8:36 PM on March 27, 2016
on the societal level astronomy is utterly useless, but on the personal level it can be life-altering.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:40 PM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:40 PM on March 27, 2016 [1 favorite]
Okay but where's the champagne?
posted by valkane at 8:47 PM on March 27, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by valkane at 8:47 PM on March 27, 2016 [2 favorites]
on the societal level astronomy is utterly useless, but on the personal level it can be life-altering.
Ok, I'll agree with the second part of that statement, but the first part displays a dismissive level of ignorance that's truly mind-blowing. D:
posted by sexyrobot at 8:53 PM on March 27, 2016 [18 favorites]
Ok, I'll agree with the second part of that statement, but the first part displays a dismissive level of ignorance that's truly mind-blowing. D:
posted by sexyrobot at 8:53 PM on March 27, 2016 [18 favorites]
What I find mind-blowing is that in a universe measured in billions of years with stars being entities that also measure their lives in billions of years, an event like this takes place in something like 20 minutes or so. That's a very rapid process to take place within an object the size of a star. Astronomy will never cease to amaze me!
posted by hippybear at 8:57 PM on March 27, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 8:57 PM on March 27, 2016 [5 favorites]
I saw some animation on a NASA site awhile back about a binary system collapsing over the course of.. Hours, maybe? I'll try and find it again. Ridiculous speeds involved.
posted by curious nu at 9:05 PM on March 27, 2016
posted by curious nu at 9:05 PM on March 27, 2016
Just in case you're like me, I initially assumed that the "visible light" comment meant that was an actual video of the event. It's only an animation. We captured photons, but presumably only a few pixels worth, not enough to see the explosion in that kind of detail.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:08 PM on March 27, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:08 PM on March 27, 2016 [2 favorites]
Okay but where's the champagne?
Over by the Sagittarius B2 Cloud. This is the Earth-shattering kaboom.
posted by sebastienbailard at 11:34 PM on March 27, 2016 [2 favorites]
Over by the Sagittarius B2 Cloud. This is the Earth-shattering kaboom.
posted by sebastienbailard at 11:34 PM on March 27, 2016 [2 favorites]
A flying giant friction blast
posted by Barking Frog at 11:52 PM on March 27, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by Barking Frog at 11:52 PM on March 27, 2016 [7 favorites]
A flying giant friction blast
You've made my day. You know why. Thank you.
posted by Avelwood at 1:04 AM on March 28, 2016 [3 favorites]
You've made my day. You know why. Thank you.
posted by Avelwood at 1:04 AM on March 28, 2016 [3 favorites]
on the societal level astronomy is utterly useless, but on the personal level it can be life-altering.
Our understanding of the universe outside of our planet is useless to society? Dear god, I hope not.
posted by brundlefly at 2:18 AM on March 28, 2016 [5 favorites]
Our understanding of the universe outside of our planet is useless to society? Dear god, I hope not.
posted by brundlefly at 2:18 AM on March 28, 2016 [5 favorites]
I didn't realise they'd been able to get Kepler working again so successfully... the details of how it's been done are fascinating.
Though I think that jury-rigging a way of balancing a spacecraft on sunlight "much as a pencil can be balanced on your finger" doesn't quite do the ingenuity of the people behind this enough justice.
posted by protorp at 4:43 AM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
Though I think that jury-rigging a way of balancing a spacecraft on sunlight "much as a pencil can be balanced on your finger" doesn't quite do the ingenuity of the people behind this enough justice.
posted by protorp at 4:43 AM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
Over by the Sagittarius B2 Cloud.
I want to go to there!
posted by valkane at 4:48 AM on March 28, 2016
I want to go to there!
posted by valkane at 4:48 AM on March 28, 2016
If you squint you can just make out Dark Phoenix flying away after the big flash.
posted by signal at 4:59 AM on March 28, 2016
posted by signal at 4:59 AM on March 28, 2016
Have we heard from Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok about this yet?
posted by lagomorphius at 5:40 AM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by lagomorphius at 5:40 AM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
And somewhere in space, the Guardians of the Galaxy zoom away from another successful heist.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:58 AM on March 28, 2016
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:58 AM on March 28, 2016
Is it me, or is every image on the NASA press release page a fabrication? We have some real astronomers hanging out here, I'd love someone to explain it to me.
The headline is "Caught For The First Time: The Early Flash Of An Exploding Star" and at the top of the page is an amazing animation of an exploding star. Except of course that's entirely a "cartoon video". There's a long history of astronomy being reported with artist illustrations, and it's not entirely misleading, but juxtaposed with that headline I wonder how many people read this quickly and think we can actually image distant stars like that?
And then the graph the NASA article publishes. With an exciting zoom in, showing the light curve on the scale of minutes, little wiggles showing measurement error every minute and the boom the Shock Breakout at 58 minutes. That's amazing! Only is it fully a fabrication? Kepler only captures light "every 30 minutes".
Over in the actual science paper they publish the actual diagram of measurements. And indeed there's one sample that shows what looks like a shock breakout. But the actual statistics and sampling are a much finer, more delicate thing than the curve NASA published in the press release.
I'm not doubting that the phenomenon NASA wrote about is real, I trust the underlying science. I'm just irritated at how NASA reported it. Part of what's beautiful about astronomy is just how subtle and tiny the effects we're able to measure are. Overselling the certainty of these things robs it of some of its wonder. And misleads the reader.
posted by Nelson at 6:44 AM on March 28, 2016 [5 favorites]
The headline is "Caught For The First Time: The Early Flash Of An Exploding Star" and at the top of the page is an amazing animation of an exploding star. Except of course that's entirely a "cartoon video". There's a long history of astronomy being reported with artist illustrations, and it's not entirely misleading, but juxtaposed with that headline I wonder how many people read this quickly and think we can actually image distant stars like that?
And then the graph the NASA article publishes. With an exciting zoom in, showing the light curve on the scale of minutes, little wiggles showing measurement error every minute and the boom the Shock Breakout at 58 minutes. That's amazing! Only is it fully a fabrication? Kepler only captures light "every 30 minutes".
Over in the actual science paper they publish the actual diagram of measurements. And indeed there's one sample that shows what looks like a shock breakout. But the actual statistics and sampling are a much finer, more delicate thing than the curve NASA published in the press release.
I'm not doubting that the phenomenon NASA wrote about is real, I trust the underlying science. I'm just irritated at how NASA reported it. Part of what's beautiful about astronomy is just how subtle and tiny the effects we're able to measure are. Overselling the certainty of these things robs it of some of its wonder. And misleads the reader.
posted by Nelson at 6:44 AM on March 28, 2016 [5 favorites]
Nasa is fighting for funding and misleading the reader is how politics is done. Graphs alone can't compete with pictures of cats. Make no mistake, this is an advertisement.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:10 AM on March 28, 2016
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:10 AM on March 28, 2016
Just look above. "This stuff is useless, but at least we get pretty pictures!"
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:15 AM on March 28, 2016
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:15 AM on March 28, 2016
There are eleven stars that have been resolved to a disc. One of those is visible in daytime.
Kepler is specifically designed not to form images. It is designed to be incredibly sensitive to variation in brightness at astonishing angular resolution. Pictures of the actual star are not available. Anyone close enough to the star to snap a quick seflie are not so much dead as emerging physics. Supernovae are bad.
When a star explodes, what are NASA meant to show? That beautiful graph? A pre-launch picture of the spacecraft?
Here's what happened:
A stellar core was happily generating enough radiation pressure to prevent gravitational collapse. The amount of iron in the core eventually rose to a level where the core started to flutter between gravitational collapse and electron degeneracy {something weird - no really we don't understand 2P supernovae well)
Then it blew apart. They do that.
And an unimaginable flux of photons ripped out of the dying star and hurtled in every direction.
A few of those photons were detected and recorded by Kepler.
These are not the noise from the stellar disintegration - these are the raw photons from the deep core of the star, as they left the surface.
How are NASA meant to depict this? The violence of the event, and the immediacy of the detection, and the sheer horror of the physics defy human comprehension.
Supernovae are bad.
posted by Combat Wombat at 7:20 AM on March 28, 2016 [11 favorites]
Kepler is specifically designed not to form images. It is designed to be incredibly sensitive to variation in brightness at astonishing angular resolution. Pictures of the actual star are not available. Anyone close enough to the star to snap a quick seflie are not so much dead as emerging physics. Supernovae are bad.
When a star explodes, what are NASA meant to show? That beautiful graph? A pre-launch picture of the spacecraft?
Here's what happened:
A stellar core was happily generating enough radiation pressure to prevent gravitational collapse. The amount of iron in the core eventually rose to a level where the core started to flutter between gravitational collapse and electron degeneracy {something weird - no really we don't understand 2P supernovae well)
Then it blew apart. They do that.
And an unimaginable flux of photons ripped out of the dying star and hurtled in every direction.
A few of those photons were detected and recorded by Kepler.
These are not the noise from the stellar disintegration - these are the raw photons from the deep core of the star, as they left the surface.
How are NASA meant to depict this? The violence of the event, and the immediacy of the detection, and the sheer horror of the physics defy human comprehension.
Supernovae are bad.
posted by Combat Wombat at 7:20 AM on March 28, 2016 [11 favorites]
When we finally are able to sense, measure and decode the information embedded in the carrier wave within dark energy it may turn out that the supernovas are intentionally triggered by the intergalactic congress to prevent the emergence of societies that could be a threat to the universe. Or just big booms for the entertainment of some analog of Q.
posted by sammyo at 7:28 AM on March 28, 2016
posted by sammyo at 7:28 AM on March 28, 2016
OK, I guess the "cartoon video" is acceptable as advertising the science. The graph though, I was going to complain more about that. But the caption is careful to say "the diagram illustrates the brightness of a supernova event relative to the sun as it unfolds". Ie: nowhere does it claim to be the actual observation graph. It's still misleading by juxtaposition, but if you read it carefully it's not an outright lie.
I'm still much more excited by the real science. It's amazing to me that Kepler managed to capture the initial burst of a star blowing up ~1B years ago. The entire phenomenon lasts just 20 minutes and Kepler's only taking one measurement every 30 minutes. There's some statistical art here that's quite nice, not to mention remarkable observations.
posted by Nelson at 7:45 AM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm still much more excited by the real science. It's amazing to me that Kepler managed to capture the initial burst of a star blowing up ~1B years ago. The entire phenomenon lasts just 20 minutes and Kepler's only taking one measurement every 30 minutes. There's some statistical art here that's quite nice, not to mention remarkable observations.
posted by Nelson at 7:45 AM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
Supernova are bad
You typed that with your fingers made out of dead supernovas.
The only good supernova is a dead supernova.
posted by Devonian at 7:52 AM on March 28, 2016 [9 favorites]
You typed that with your fingers made out of dead supernovas.
The only good supernova is a dead supernova.
posted by Devonian at 7:52 AM on March 28, 2016 [9 favorites]
We are come from supernovae. Our atoms come from the cores of stars, except those that come from the origin of the universe.
Our original sin is the violence of our origin. Or something.
Neutrinos can kill.
posted by Combat Wombat at 8:00 AM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
Our original sin is the violence of our origin. Or something.
Neutrinos can kill.
posted by Combat Wombat at 8:00 AM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
I really don't want to be the wet blanket on an astronomy press release, especially one about supernovae, which are near and dear to my heart. This is a very neat use of Kepler- most people wouldn't have guessed you could do that. And it's a nice result. But the press release is definitely overhyped. We've tracked many supernovae in other galaxies in far more detail.
(And we haven't had a supernova in our galaxy since the invention of the telescope, which is frustrating as all hell. Come on, Eta Carina! There probably won't be a mass extinction when you blow.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:43 AM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
(And we haven't had a supernova in our galaxy since the invention of the telescope, which is frustrating as all hell. Come on, Eta Carina! There probably won't be a mass extinction when you blow.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:43 AM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
1.4 billion lights years ago. That was before the internet, right?
And they're just now telling us?
posted by mule98J at 10:31 AM on March 28, 2016
And they're just now telling us?
posted by mule98J at 10:31 AM on March 28, 2016
Even though gossip may travel faster than the speed of light, it still takes a while for some of these things to surface in the common chattersphere.
posted by hippybear at 10:35 AM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by hippybear at 10:35 AM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]
That's amazing! Only is it fully a fabrication? Kepler only captures light "every 30 minutes".
IANAA, but I was a little curious about that too, and the webpage for Kepler presents a slightly more nuanced description:
"The CCDs are read out every three seconds to prevent saturation .... The data are integrated for 30 minutes." So it would appear that while the data NASA is receiving are for 30 minute intervals, it would not really be fair to say Kepler is only capturing light every 30 minutes - it's capturing photons constantly (except for I guess the brief moment every 3 seconds that the CCD is read out). So each dataset represents light received over that whole period of 30 minutes, not simply one instantaneous snapshot each followed by 30 minutes of inactivity. A distinction that does not fully respond to your question, I recognize, but an important one I think nonetheless.
posted by solotoro at 11:44 AM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
IANAA, but I was a little curious about that too, and the webpage for Kepler presents a slightly more nuanced description:
"The CCDs are read out every three seconds to prevent saturation .... The data are integrated for 30 minutes." So it would appear that while the data NASA is receiving are for 30 minute intervals, it would not really be fair to say Kepler is only capturing light every 30 minutes - it's capturing photons constantly (except for I guess the brief moment every 3 seconds that the CCD is read out). So each dataset represents light received over that whole period of 30 minutes, not simply one instantaneous snapshot each followed by 30 minutes of inactivity. A distinction that does not fully respond to your question, I recognize, but an important one I think nonetheless.
posted by solotoro at 11:44 AM on March 28, 2016 [2 favorites]
Thanks solotoro, that's interesting how the instrument works. IIRC Kepler's whole purpose is to detect brightness variations, as a way to spot transiting planets. So spotting a variation in a supernova makes some sense. I wonder how the sampling / integration thing affects the data that's recorded. It's hard to count the tiny blue dots in the paper's graph but if I did it right, they're only reporting one observation every 30 minutes.
posted by Nelson at 12:02 PM on March 28, 2016
posted by Nelson at 12:02 PM on March 28, 2016
Kepler is limited by downlink bandwidth, so 1) it only downlinks little windows around stars of interest, and 2) it sums together (onboard) the individual integrations, either into thirty minute blocks or, for particularly interesting stars, one minute blocks. Think of each blue point as an average.
I think it is misleading to say that Kepler doesn't form images. Here's a full focal plane image. It only downlinks these for maintenance/targeting purposes, but it is definitely an image.
posted by kiltedtaco at 8:35 PM on March 28, 2016
I think it is misleading to say that Kepler doesn't form images. Here's a full focal plane image. It only downlinks these for maintenance/targeting purposes, but it is definitely an image.
posted by kiltedtaco at 8:35 PM on March 28, 2016
> I think it is misleading to say that Kepler doesn't form images. Here's a full focal plane image.
My God! It's full of stars!
Since Kepler only cares about photometry (how bright is that star now? ... now? ... and now?) it actually defocuses the telescope slightly. So the image of a star is spread out over more pixels than it needs to be - it's blurry, but that means that the readout noise gets averaged over more pixels and so the photometry for each star is less noisy than it would otherwise be. It's very clever - here's a pdf technical report that describes some of it, for example.
So that gorgeous image above is actually deliberately (slightly) more blurry than it could have been, given a 0.95-m space telescope.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:59 PM on March 29, 2016 [2 favorites]
My God! It's full of stars!
Since Kepler only cares about photometry (how bright is that star now? ... now? ... and now?) it actually defocuses the telescope slightly. So the image of a star is spread out over more pixels than it needs to be - it's blurry, but that means that the readout noise gets averaged over more pixels and so the photometry for each star is less noisy than it would otherwise be. It's very clever - here's a pdf technical report that describes some of it, for example.
So that gorgeous image above is actually deliberately (slightly) more blurry than it could have been, given a 0.95-m space telescope.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:59 PM on March 29, 2016 [2 favorites]
"There are eleven stars that have been resolved to a disc. One of those is visible in daytime."
Here's pics of a few of those discs.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 3:05 PM on March 29, 2016 [2 favorites]
Here's pics of a few of those discs.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 3:05 PM on March 29, 2016 [2 favorites]
RedOrGreen: That Kepler report is super useful for solving a completely non-Kepler problem I am working on right now. This was a very unexpected outcome of a shock breakout thread.
posted by kiltedtaco at 7:13 PM on March 29, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by kiltedtaco at 7:13 PM on March 29, 2016 [1 favorite]
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