Science News: A supernova gets caught in the whole act (that’s a first)

Published: March 6, 2008, 10:56 am

Science News, a must-read, DC-based weekly for many science writers who wait for it to show up in the mail, is gradually making more of its material available to non-subscribers online. Hence The Tracker can pay it more attention than previously. New editor Tom Siegfried forwards a recent example: Ron Cowen’s report on the first, if somewhat serendipitous, astronomical observation of a supernova from almost its very start. Usually, a bright flash signals that such a thing has occurred - but astronomers miss the vital, opening stages while they get their big guns fixed on the right place in the sky to gather some real detail. The self-obliterated star, called SN2008D, betrayed its detonation with an X-ray signal arriving even before its sharp spike in visible light and other such longer wavelengths. It was noticed immediately, Cowen reports, because astronomers using NASA’s Swift satellite happened to have its detector looking right nearby at another supernova in the host

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