NGC
esiegel | April 1, 2013"It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character." -Dale Turner
This April Fools' day, even though the rest of the internet revels in trickery, happens to fall on a Monday. Over here at Starts With A Bang, that means it's time for Messier Monday, an in-depth look at one of the 110 deep-sky objects catalogued by Charles Messier in the 18th Century to help comet-hunters avoid confusion. Today, the catalogue boasts 107…
esiegel | May 21, 2008We know, more or less how supernovae work. We've seen them just hours after they first go off through telescopes and satellites. The Crab Nebula, also known as M1, was a supernova that went off nearly 1,000 years ago in our own galaxy, for example, and we can simulate pretty well that it formed like this:
But this is totally new: a paper is coming out in the journal Nature tomorrow (the 22nd of May), where they've caught a star exploding red-handed!
First things first; here's a quicktime movie of the explosion. Let's put up some screenshots of the Blue Giant star before the explosion:
Here'…