400-yr old star explosion observed

[theblackalchemist]

400-yr old star explosion observed

 

NEW YORK: A team of astronomers has managed to observe the explosion of a star that died more than 400 years ago by studying light that has

bounced off distant clouds of interstellar dust.

 

Researchers were able to observe the explosion as they spotted some light from the earlier such space actions. Their astronomical archaeology could provide clues about dark energy

, a mysterious force that may be pushing the Universe apart.

 

In November 1572, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe spotted something strange in the night sky. "I noticed that a new and unusual star, surpassing the other stars in brilliancy, was shining almost directly above my head," he wrote in Nature.

 

Brahe called the object a "stella nova", or new star, but it was actually but astronomers now say that it was explosive death of an old star, known today as a supernova.

 

"What we have essentially done here is to use interstellar dust as a kind of a mirror," Oliver Krause, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, was quoted as saying.

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/HealthSci/400-yr_old_star_explosion_observed/articleshow/3796240.cms