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The Brightest Supernova Ever Recorded Lit Up The Sky On This Day in 1006
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasm.../#857623c230aa
Kiona N. Smith , CONTRIBUTORI cover the history of science, technology, and exploration. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Smithsonian Institution via Wikimedia Commons
Heated gas (red) and electrons (blue) are all that remains of the brightest supernova in recorded history.
Over a thousand years ago today, people around the world looked up into the night sky and saw something wonderful and terrifying. A piece of the night sky in the constellation Lupus which had previously been dark suddenly flared with light sixteen times brighter than Venus. Chinese astronomers called it a "guest star," but today we know that the bright object which briefly lit the night sky beginning on April 30, 1006, was a supernova -- the brightest in recorded history.
Because the 1006 supernova was so bright, it's also one of the most widely documented astronomical events in history, even though it happened 600 years before the invention of the telescope. Observers as far north as Switzerland and stretching across a swath of the globe from Egypt to Iraq and east to China and Japan, recorded the "guest star" and its appearance. The 1006 supernova may even be depicted in a petroglyph in Arizona, made by the Hohokam people, although that interpretation of a white circle with lines radiating from it has sparked some debate among archaeologists.
Those descriptions, many of which are remarkably detailed for observers working without telescopes or imaging instruments, give modern astronomers a lot of information to help them reconstruct what really lit up the sky in 1006.
An astronomer at the Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland reported that the supernova's brightness varied over the three months it was visible, sometimes dimming or fading altogether before flaring to life again. Eventually it disappeared and then reappeared, more dimly, for another year and a half. Egyptian astronomer and astrologer Ali ibn Ridwan estimated that the light source covered about two to three times as much of the visible sky as Venus, and compared its brightness to that of the quarter Moon. Chinese astrologer Zhou Keming and others recorded the supernova's position in the sky with great precision.
Based on those descriptions, modern astronomers estimate that the 1006 supernova was a type 1a - the kind that happens in binary star systems in which at least one of the stars is a white dwarf which reignites briefly before dying in a fiery cataclysm. In this case, the star whose death brightened the early medieval sky was 7200 light years away.
That means the supernova really happened about 8.200 years ago, but it took until 1006 for the light of the cosmic explosion to reach Earth. Today, SN 1006 isn't visible with the naked eye, but telescopes like the Chandra X-ray observator can still see it as expanding ball of gas, slowly cooling and fading, which will eventually contribute to the formation of new stars.
The Brightest Supernova Ever Recorded Lit Up The Sky On This Day in 1006
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasm.../#857623c230aa
Kiona N. Smith , CONTRIBUTORI cover the history of science, technology, and exploration. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Smithsonian Institution via Wikimedia CommonsHeated gas (red) and electrons (blue) are all that remains of the brightest supernova in recorded history.
Over a thousand years ago today, people around the world looked up into the night sky and saw something wonderful and terrifying. A piece of the night sky in the constellation Lupus which had previously been dark suddenly flared with light sixteen times brighter than Venus. Chinese astronomers called it a "guest star," but today we know that the bright object which briefly lit the night sky beginning on April 30, 1006, was a supernova -- the brightest in recorded history.
Because the 1006 supernova was so bright, it's also one of the most widely documented astronomical events in history, even though it happened 600 years before the invention of the telescope. Observers as far north as Switzerland and stretching across a swath of the globe from Egypt to Iraq and east to China and Japan, recorded the "guest star" and its appearance. The 1006 supernova may even be depicted in a petroglyph in Arizona, made by the Hohokam people, although that interpretation of a white circle with lines radiating from it has sparked some debate among archaeologists.
Those descriptions, many of which are remarkably detailed for observers working without telescopes or imaging instruments, give modern astronomers a lot of information to help them reconstruct what really lit up the sky in 1006.
An astronomer at the Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland reported that the supernova's brightness varied over the three months it was visible, sometimes dimming or fading altogether before flaring to life again. Eventually it disappeared and then reappeared, more dimly, for another year and a half. Egyptian astronomer and astrologer Ali ibn Ridwan estimated that the light source covered about two to three times as much of the visible sky as Venus, and compared its brightness to that of the quarter Moon. Chinese astrologer Zhou Keming and others recorded the supernova's position in the sky with great precision.
Based on those descriptions, modern astronomers estimate that the 1006 supernova was a type 1a - the kind that happens in binary star systems in which at least one of the stars is a white dwarf which reignites briefly before dying in a fiery cataclysm. In this case, the star whose death brightened the early medieval sky was 7200 light years away.
That means the supernova really happened about 8.200 years ago, but it took until 1006 for the light of the cosmic explosion to reach Earth. Today, SN 1006 isn't visible with the naked eye, but telescopes like the Chandra X-ray observator can still see it as expanding ball of gas, slowly cooling and fading, which will eventually contribute to the formation of new stars.
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