A WASTED JOURNEY ?

Last Wednesday, 24th August, using the 48 inch Palomar robotic telescope in southern California- which is designed to observe and uncover astronomical events as they happen- astronomers noticed a new star, dubbed SN 2011fe, in the relatively nearby spiral galaxy M 101, aka the Pinwheel Galaxy, just off the handle of the Plough constellation, otherwise known as the Big Dipper.

Located 21 million light years away, this is the closest Type 1a supernova seen in decades. A Type Ia supernova occurs when a white dwarf draws matter in from a companion star and dumps it on its surface until a runaway nuclear reaction ignites. While many such supernovae are discovered annually they tend to be much farther away at hundreds of millions or billions of light years away.  

Even so, I find it difficult to get my head around the distances involved here.  As light travels at 186,000 miles every second, the distance it travels in one year, never mind 21 million years, produces a number which is too much for these pages to cope with.  The other thing that always astonishes me is that we are, therefore, now seeing the image of an event that occurred 21 million years ago.   So it might be worth a look over the next few evenings as the new star becomes brighter.   You might need binoculars and a clear sky but if you can get away from the light pollution, you might just make it out just after dusk in the north-western sky.  

Just one thing occurs to me - if when the photons of light arrive here on planet Earth after their 21million years journey and they see the chaos that confronts them, they might feel inclined to turn around and head back home again.