Amateur astronomer strikes it lucky with first glimpse of a Supernova Published today in the journal Nature is a description of a rare and difficult to capture event – the birth of a supernova (and the death of a star). Amateur astronomer, Victor Buso, struck lucky in September 2016 when he decided to test out a new camera attached to his 16 inch telescope. Keen to make sure his new toy was …
We called them the Vauxhall Shove-It because inevitably that was what happend when we had lifts in them - we wound up being the engine component. I'm not sure if it was the owner of these things treating them considerably worse than others or just a demonstration of the reliability of them.
Petrolheads may be disappointed to learn that a supernova is not a variant of the venerable Vauxhall Nova GSi, which transported many a 1990s teenager around town in style while leaving a trail of oil and engine parts in its wake - rather it is one of the last, violent, acts in the life of a massive star.
The question for a Friday is: which is/was more survivable? A supernova or a trip across the country in a Vauxhall Nova GSi? From (repressed) memory I'm edging towards the supernova.
I had a used Chevette in the 80's and it was a gem. If you went down a hill, when you put the power back on at the bottom the road would disappear in a huge cloud of smoke. The rear diff sounded like a coffee grinder and the engine had a great knock. That said it refused to die, you just needed plenty of oil (it was like running a two-stroke at times).
It had one redeeming feature, the boot was absolutely massive (it puts most of today's similar sized cars to shame) and would swallow a tuba. two trumpets and a horn, the trombone of the brass quintet had to go inside with the occupants.
Unfortunately it expired on a road in the middle of bugger-all in Wales and was pushed into a ditch so cars could pass!.
The Nova was basically the follow up to the Chevette, but it's based on the Opel Corsa from Spain apparently. From the second gen on they just called them Corsas.
The entire wiki entry is worth a read, but I'll leave you with this gem:
"A very significant security problem with the Nova was that removing the hazard light switch, turning it upside down and inserting it back into its slot would cause the ignition to come on with no clear explanation."
My sister owned a pimped up purple one of those before rolling it.. I hire ever was far more sensible... (I owned the 1.2i 4 speed manual that looked stock but had a fettled engine. Turns out past 100 it stops being so areodynic that's not fun..i also managed not to roll mine when i crashed it but parked it in a ditch instead. )
Still the worst car I have ever driven... and that includes my last one which got scraped with no handbrake, barely working brakes, a mostly dead battery and something growing on... well most of the interior ontop of being an estate hand me down.
Amateur astronomer, Victor Buso, struck lucky in September 2016 when he decided to test out a new camera attached to his 16 inch telescope.
Not so lucky for anyone living on a rock orbiting it (back when it happened). Not too great for anyone living on rocks orbiting nearby stars either :-/
Massive-type supernovas don't have time to develop planets with life. Depending on how massive the star is, it could live only 10 million years or maybe 100 million. It took a few hundred million years just for the Earth to cool down to the point where it had water.
As for nearby stars: the general opinion is that supernovas aren't a threat beyond a few light years. Just as well, because Betelgeuse is going to blow up sooner or later and it's only 600 light years away.
Well said but from what I understand they keep pushing back how little time Earth needed before it had water (wow quick check shows may have formed with some surface water). Things (life, water, etc) early on seem to happen much faster than boffins previous had assumed. Your point still stands as it took a shed load of a long time until complex life showed up though.
A transcript of Mr Buso making the phone call reporting the supernova was captured by Alexa and follows:
"Arrgghh! Jesusf*ck my eye! Christ! Argh! Where's the f*cking phone? Argharghargh! Hello? Ambulance! I need an ambulance for f*cks sake! One with an eyebath. Argh! And I'd like to report a supernova. Where? In my eye right now! Arrrrgh!"
It took one man with some interest in the skies who could operate a camera to find this and realize what had happened. it took 21 authors of the Nature article to get the supernova reported to the public.
Nothing unusual in this, but I would rather be facing the right direction and know what I saw than have to build a career on the discoveries of others.
It's been some time since the content of a scientific paper could consist of "look! a new light in the sky!", or "a two headed calf was born". They'll have done quite a lot of analysis and comparison beyond what the discoverer did.
Also, Nature didn't report it to "the public". Nature published a scientific paper analysing the supernova, and as PR pitched it to the press using the hook of an amateur discovery.
Lastly, there is a "V Buso" listed as an author, and "VB" is described as the discoverer in the first sentence in the main text.
I would rather be facing the right direction and know what I saw than have to build a career on the discoveries of others
One suspects that Mr Buso's (impressive) ability to recognise and identify the phenomenon was almost certainly derived from the shoulders of giants rather than derived entirely from first principles. I take my hat off to his infinitesimal contribution to the sum of human knowledge
Eeek. In honour of it being a Friday, and just being naturally curious I stupidly googled 16" telescopes. There's some serious range in prices out there with the more motorised versions being £20k but the manual ones being close to £1.5k.
While I had an idea that the bigger the telescope the more important it is that they are manufactured to high specifications (and field correctable) but I didn't appreciate that one also had to be very careful to ensure that the components, eye lenses, camera lenses, etc were all at stable temperatures. Makes sense when you learn this, of course, but not what would have been at the front of my mind.
But it's a wasted day if I don't learn something...
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