Astronomers have spotted a cataclysmic explosion that marked the death of a huge, distant star in a blast five times as bright and powerful as any they had seen previously. They said Monday that a similar fate may be imminent for a star in Earth’s galactic neighborhood.
The size and energy of the newly recorded blast, 240 million light-years away, has already begun to transform scientific understanding of how especially large stars explode and has left awestruck researchers concerned – and a little excited – about what might happen to the similarly enormous and unstable star closer to home.
Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who was not involved in the research, said that enormous Eta Carinae, which is only 7,500 light-years away in our Milky Way galaxy, has many features similar to the newly discovered exploded star and has been showing signs of instability that could lead to a similar supernova.
If Eta Carinae blows up, researchers said, it could spew radiation in Earth’s direction. More likely, however, it would erupt into the most luminous star in our sky – visible during the day and bright enough to let people read unaided at night.
Unlike most supernovae that fade quickly, the light from the explosion of the star called SN2006gy has remained extremely bright since September.
The supernova was first detected in September during a routine telescope sweep by University of Texas graduate student Robert Quimby.
“Discoveries don’t get more exciting than this for a theorist,” Livio said.
