May 22 2008
From The Space Library
A team of astronomers led by Alicia M. Soderberg announced in the journal Nature that they had made the first observations of a supernova in the process of exploding. Before this discovery, astronomers had only observed supernovas by means of their visible light, which had traveled at least a month before reaching Earth. However, by serendipity, Soderberg had viewed the supernova SN 2008D from the beginning of its explosion. She had been observing the star’s galaxy using NASA’s Swift X-ray Telescope, when she caught the initial explosion of SN 2008D, only visible in the x-ray wavelength. Soderberg had alerted the astronomy community of the event. Scientists had trained several telescopes, including NASA’s HST and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, on SN 2008D. They had watched the star as it exploded over the following days. Scientists hoped that studying the initial x-ray burst of SN 2008D would teach them how to recognize and observe other supernovas in the future.
Dennis Overbye, “Scientists See Supernova in Action,” New York Times, 22 May 2008; Andrea Thompson, “Supernova Birth Observed for First Time,” Space.com, 22 May 2008, http://www.space.com/5371-supernovabirth-observed-time.html (accessed 16 March 2011); see also A. M. Soderberg et al., “An Extremely Luminous XRay Outburst at the Birth of a Supernova,” Nature 453, no. 7194 (22 May 2008): 469-474.
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