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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Astronomers have discovered the youngest known supernova in the Milky Way galaxy, still just a baby at 140 years old.
The scientists, who announced their findings Wed nesday, used a radio observatory in New Mexico and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory in space to identify when the supernova occurred. They put the dying-star event at sometime around 1868.
Before this, the youngest supernova in the Milky Way was thought to have occurred around 1680.
Two to three supernovae are thought to occur every century in the Milky Way. As a result, there are probably even younger ones out there waiting to be identified, said David Green of the University of Cambridge in England, who led the radio-observatory study.
