William Atkins
Thursday, 04 December 2008 21:41
Science -
Space
Page 2 of 5
Astronomers know today that what he actually saw was the explosive death of a very old star, which is now called a supernova.
A recreated image of the supernova is seen on the Nature News
website (as reported on page one).
Now 436 years later, the remnant of Tycho’s Supernova was seen using infrared and x-ray data from the
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (in
English). They used telescopes in Hawaii and Spain to acquire the data.
Then, an international team of astronomers was able to re-create the explosion of a star that died (which produced what Brahe saw that night and even into the next day) by using light (radiation) that reflected off of clouds of interstellar dust.
The BBC News article “
Ancient supernova mystery solved” calls it
“faint light echoes of the original explosion.”
German astronomer Oliver Krause of the Max Planck Institute (Heidelberg) stated,
"What we have essentially done here is to use interstellar dust as a kind of a mirror.” [BBC News]
The article also contains a video of the explosion, and how it affected Earth.
Page three continues with how the supernova discovered by Brahe is still today helping astronomers learn more about the Universe.
