Twenty-one million years ago in the Pinwheel Galaxy, a spiral-armed neighbor of our own Milky Way, an old, dim star had a very bad day. It exploded and began to blaze like a billion suns.
On Aug. 24, Peter Nugent had a very good day. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory astrophysicist spotted the supernova in images from a robotic telescope. This one was so close — in cosmic terms — and seen so soon after its light reached Earth that astronomers are calling it the supernova of a generation.
Soon, telescopes around the world and beyond, including the Hubble Space Telescope, swiveled to take a peek.
“This is a special event,” said Ken Sembach of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “Everyone wants a piece of it.”
Nugent said the blaze will continue to brighten until Wednesday or Thursday, visible just above the handle of the Big Dipper to backyard astronomers wielding binoculars.
The last supernova to generate such buzz flared into view in 1972. Before that, a 1937 explosion caught everyone’s attention.
“This is not an every-year event,” said Robert Kirshner, a Harvard University supernova hunter. “This is an every-decade-or-four event.”
