Caught in the act: UW astronomers find a rare supernova ‘impostor’ in a nearby galaxy

Originally shared by Pierre Markuse

Caught in the act: UW astronomers find a rare supernova ‘impostor’ in a nearby galaxy

Breanna Binder, a University of Washington postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astronomy and lecturer in the School of STEM at UW Bothell, spends her days pondering X-rays. As she and her colleagues report in a new paper published February 12 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, they recently solved a mystery involving X-rays — a case of X-rays present when they shouldn’t have been. This mystery’s unusual main character — a star that is pretending to be a supernova — illustrates the importance of being in the right place at the right time. Such was the case in May 2010 when an amateur South African astronomer pointed his telescope toward NGC300 (https://goo.gl/qKILrM), a nearby galaxy. He discovered what appeared to be a supernova (SN 2010da) — a massive star ending its life in a blaze of glory. 

Full story here:
http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/02/12/caught-in-the-act-uw-astronomers-find-a-rare-supernova-imposter-in-a-nearby-galaxy/

More on supernova impostors here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_impostor
https://plus.google.com/+PierreMarkuse/posts/C6vkSXFbdp5
https://plus.google.com/+PierreMarkuse/posts/4Ri8KhPGtLo

Image credit: The galaxy NGC 300, home to the unusual system Binder and her colleagues studied. The spiral galaxy is over 6 million light years away. NASA/JPL-Caltech/OCIW

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#science #astronomy #ngc300   #supernovaimpostor   #xray   #space   #binarystar   #neutronstar