The supernova that is super – Science Fanpage

In Pictures: Artistic representation of supernova super bright ASASSN 15lh-view as it would appear from an exoplanet located at about 10,000 light years away in the galaxy of the supernova. (Credit: Beijing Planetarium / Jin Ma)

He pulverized every record, leaving astronomers amazed to observe: a cosmic explosion of about 200 times more powerful than the average of a supernova, an event among the most powerful ever recorded in the universe.

of 570 billion Suns

At the peak intensity of the explosion, called ASASSN-15lh, showed a brightness of 570 billion times the sun: if it were not enough to understand, imagine brightness can be reached roughly taking all the stars of the Milky Way, and multiplying the result by 20. A supernova super bright, identified thanks to astronomers led by Subo Dong of Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics Beijing and described in an article published by the journal Science.

ASASSN-15lh is the most powerful supernova discovery in human history. Its mechanism of explosion and its energy source are well shrouded in mystery, since all known theories encounter serious difficulties in explaining the immense amount of energy emanating from it. – Subo Dong

The explosion in the heavens

The first sighting of the explosion goes back to June 2015, when the twin telescopes at Cerro Tololo in Chile, with a lens of just 14 centimeters in diameter, have seen the object suddenly appear extremely bright (but too far to be noticed by the human eye). The observation was conducted as part of an international collaboration ( All Sky Automated Survey for supernovae , ASAS-SN) led by Ohio State University. The exceptional nature of the event has not escaped the astronomers who, indeed, have made sure that from activating more telescopes possible around the Earth in order to gather more data even Swift, NASA, took part in the observations.

An unusual supernova …

In just four months, ASASSN-15lh it issued an amount of energy that our sun, in the state that is currently, would emit over 90 billion years. Looking at the bright and slow afterglow, which was gradually dying, astronomers have been able to acquire some key elements regarding the source of ASASSN-15lh. Essentially, it was the use of the telescope’s 2.5-meter du Pont in Chile, in which they identified the signatures of the chemical elements scattered by the explosion: the spectrum reconstructed by researchers shows no similarities with any of more than 200 supernovae identified to date thanks to the All Sky Automated Survey for supernovae . Subsequent observations have revealed a certain similarity with the super bright supernovae poor hydrogen; through the eye of 10 meters of the South African Large Telescope be established which is 3.8 billion light years from us.

… In a galaxy only

A bit more flavor to the “super supernova” is its own galactic environment that, normally, for items like looks weak and faint: in this case, the scientists found instead a great power even from the same host galaxy. In reality it is assumed also that the galaxy is located ASASSN-15lh is actually weak and is in fact blurred by another more powerful and bright.

A magnetar?

Now we have to wait what will the Hubble Space Telescope, in charge of revealing the nature and location of the object: it is a magnetar, which is a neutron star with a powerful magnetic field? In this case it would be a magnetar that defies all known laws by scientists.