NASA ’s recently retired Kepler quad telescope was famous for its power to spot thousands of exoplanets . But this year , it presented a mysterious observation of a supernova .
Kepler offered scientists another chance to search at the light coming from before , during , and after a supernova . This“exquisite ” data point , in the words of the scientist who wrote about it , deepen the mystery about why these kinds of case 1a supernovae shine so brightly shortly after they blow , and what do their concluding plosion .
Scientists were first alarm to the comportment of a supernova , now called 2018oh , via a suite of five scope worldwide ( call the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae ) which provided the images obtain on February 4 , 2018 . Luckily , the extragalactic nebula in which the supernova occurred , hollo UGC 478 , was part of the Kepler infinite scope ’s galaxy - observing campaign . scientist were then capable to mix Kepler ’s sensitive data with specialized observations of the supernova ’s color using other telescopes , admit the Dark Energy Camera and the Pan - STARRS1 scope .
It might voice foreign — why was an exoplanet hunter look at remote galaxies ? Kepler repeatedly takes wide images of the same spots in its sight , and can watch over K of extragalactic nebula at a time . Moreover , it ’s mean to be tender to small changes in the amount of light give off by objects , as it usually looks for the dim light change caused planet drop dead in front of distant stars .
2018oh is a type 1a supernova , based on the way its light face . Models show that these supernovae come from a pair of lead in which one , a whitened midget , sucks up a lot of mass from the other before explode . This is the 4th character 1a supernova spotted in a Kepler view yet , and it ’s the closest and brightest with the most precise data .
A host of research worker recently released cleaned - up analysis of the supernova . Twosuchresults regain that the graphical record of the “ idle curve ball , ” or amount of light over time , did n’t appear as an even curve . Instead , it had a upward straight line piece , where the supernova shone brighter than expected for five days , before curving upward , suggest that two dissimilar outgrowth were happening . They also noted that the supernova appeared bluer than others .
So , what was causing the two - part brightening of this supernova ? There are several ideas . possibly the illumination interacted with the nearby principal , which offered fuel for the detonation . Or perchance there was a helium shell on the control surface of the white nanus , which render more ignition fabric . Or maybe there was a lump of radioactive nickel clumped unevenly in the star , which would have add up sparkle to the touch . Further observance with the Swift X - ray telescope seemed to dominate out interactions with debris fence the explode maven .
One researcher we spoke to thinks it ’s too former for an answer — and that maybe it ’s time to go back to the drawing card . “ Theory people need to go back to the books and simulate the unlike path that this early expelling could be produced , ” Maximillian Stritzinger , a physicist at Aarhus University in Denmark who has studied the colors let out by these type 1a supernovae , told Gizmodo .
The supernova link a list of difficult - to - describe case 1as , according to the studies . But there ’s hope yet . Kepler may still have observed more supernovae , and that data may further help scientists lick the mystery .
[ ApJ , ApJ , ApJL , ApJL ]
AstrophysicsScienceSupernovae
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