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Articles: My Thoughts | In quest of Infinity-06
- Prof. venkata ramanamurty mallajosyula
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Loving Sai Ram and greetings again. I am sorry there was a break in presenting this series but then you know there was a good reason for it! In my last article, I dealt with Black Holes, prior to which I discussed White Dwarf and Super Nova explosions. When I was away in Kodai during May, I read in the papers that astronomers have discovered an explosion that appears to be the “mother of them all”.
Brightest Stellar Explosion Ever
The discovery is based on extended observations made using the Chandra orbiting x-ray observatory and several ground based telescopes operating in various wavelength regions. This supernova named SN 2006gy, is the brightest and most energetic stellar explosion ever recorded and may be a long-sought new type of explosion. Seen below is an artist's illustration that shows what SN 2006gy may have looked like if viewed at a close distance.
The fireworks-like material in white shows the explosion of an extremely massive star. This debris is pushing back two lobes of cool, red gas that were expelled in a large eruption from the star before it exploded. The green, blue and yellow regions in these lobes shows where gas is being heated in a shock front as the explosion material crashes into it and pushes it backwards. Most of the optical light generated by the supernova is thought to come from debris that has been heated by radioactivity, but some likely comes from the shocked gas. The lobes can be seen in the image captured by the Chandra telescope [see below].
The Supernova
Sn 2006gy captured by the Chandra Telescope
SN 2006gy occurred in a distant galaxy [NGC 1260] approximately 238 million light years away. Therefore, due to the time it took light from the supernova to reach the Earth, the event occurred about 238 million years ago. Preliminary indications are that it was an unusually high-energy supernova of a very large star, around 150 solar masses. That is a real wow! The energy released by the explosion has been estimated as ten times more than the typical supernova explosion. The supernova's light brightened for about 70 days after discovery, until roughly the beginning of December 2006, and has been slowly decreasing since then.
Although the SN 2006gy supernova is intrinsically about ten times as luminous as compared to SN 1987 A, which was bright enough to be seen by the naked eye [concerning which I have already discussed], SN 2006gy was more than 1,400 times as far away as SN 1987A, and too far away to be seen without a telescope. Currently, astrophysicists are busy theorizing what could have caused such a massive explosion, of a magnitude hitherto unknown.
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