Post by patrickm on Jan 12, 2012 14:52:21 GMT -6
From Astronomy Magazine
Image caption: These three images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveal the emergence of an exploding star, called a supernova. Nicknamed SN Primo, the exploding star belongs to a special class called type Ia supernovae, which are distance markers used for studying dark energy and the expansion rate of the universe. The top image shows part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, the region where astronomers were looking for a supernova blast. The white box shows where the supernova is later seen. The bottom left image is a close-up of the field without the supernova. A new bright object, identified as the supernova, appears in the image at bottom right.
Read more at Astronomy Magazine.
Photo Credit: NASA/ESA/A. Riess (Space Telescope Science Institute and the Johns Hopkins Univ.)/S. Rodney (the Johns Hopkins Univ.)
via @astronomymag
Hubble breaks new ground with distant supernova discovery
Such remote supernovae will help astronomers determine whether the exploding stars remain dependable cosmic yardsticks across vast distances of space in an epoch when the cosmos was only one-third its current age of 13.7 billion years.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has looked deep into the distant universe and detected the feeble glow of a star that exploded more than 9 billion years ago. The sighting is the first finding of an ambitious survey that will help astronomers place better constraints on the nature of dark energy, the mysterious repulsive force that is causing the universe to fly apart ever faster.
Image caption: These three images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveal the emergence of an exploding star, called a supernova. Nicknamed SN Primo, the exploding star belongs to a special class called type Ia supernovae, which are distance markers used for studying dark energy and the expansion rate of the universe. The top image shows part of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, the region where astronomers were looking for a supernova blast. The white box shows where the supernova is later seen. The bottom left image is a close-up of the field without the supernova. A new bright object, identified as the supernova, appears in the image at bottom right.
Read more at Astronomy Magazine.
Photo Credit: NASA/ESA/A. Riess (Space Telescope Science Institute and the Johns Hopkins Univ.)/S. Rodney (the Johns Hopkins Univ.)
via @astronomymag
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