College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Supernova

Astronomers at the E.W. Fick Observatory have helped discover a supernova in the making.

The movies in the Star Wars series begin with the familiar music and the even more familiar catch phrase - "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away."

In February, astronomers at Iowa State's E.W. Fick Observatory near Boone didn't have to go to the movies to see something that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

All that was missing was the John Williams musical score.

Real life science is much better than fantasy. The Iowa State astronomers helped an astronomer from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory discover a supernova in the making (designated as SN2001V) as it ramps up to "maximum light" or the point at which the greatest amount of visible energy is emitted from the object as viewed from Earth.

Phil Appleton, associate professor of physics and astronomy, and Joe Eitter, manager of the Fick Observatory, have tracked the supernova almost since its discovery in late February.

While the discovery was made just a few weeks ago, the explosion of the White Dwarf Star that created the supernova actually occurred 180 million light years ago.

"Dinosaurs were walking the Earth when the explosion happened," Appleton said.

What makes this supernova so special for Appleton, Eitter and other astronomers is the fact that it was caught so early. And the astronomer who first discovered it has the Iowa State group to thank.

The supernova was found as part of an international COLA project, which stands for Compact Objects in Low-power AGNs (active galactic nuclei). Astronomers throughout the world survey galaxies both in the northern and southern hemispheres. As part of that project, the Iowa State team had obtained service observations ®¢ observations performed by a third party ®¢ of a nearby galaxy on a telescope at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard.

"They were preparing to take a spectrum of the galaxy (NGC 3987) at our request for an international project to study black holes in the nuclei of galaxies," Appleton said. "When they were observing they noticed the supernova. In a sense we aided in the discovery."

Appleton said Iowa State's archived images indicated that the astronomers had images of the object before it exploded into a supernova. He said it was just luck that allowed this supernova to be discovered so early in the process.

"It is incredible to see a supernova of this type caught so early before it reached maximum light," he said. "We use these types of supernovas to map out the expansion of the Universe, so studying and understanding the Ôtype 1a' supernovas is quite important."

The supernova was created when a stream of gas flows between a White Dwarf Star and a larger star in the same system. The material eventually heats up the mass of the White Dwarf Star before literally exploding as a supernova. Supernovas produce more energy in one second than our sun will in its entire lifetime.

Since the discovery, Appleton and Eitter have been observing the supernova virtually every night, including throughout the recent full moon, a period when astronomers usually away from the telescope.

"The exciting thing is we have been able to map the supernova over a period of a few days as it grew to its peak brightness,"

Appleton said. Appleton and Eitter have taken many images of the supernova with a new wide-field CCD camera (0.6-meter Mather telescope) at the Fick Observatory, which is almost twice as efficient as the observatory's old camera.