Universe's
biggest Explosions – Super nova
Remote
telescope SN monitoring!
Super nova -
stars which explode.
It turns out that there is more
than one way for a star to explode, and hence we have more than one type of
supernovae..
Our sun was formed out of
clouds of dust and gas. In these clouds, little fragments collapsed together,
and their gravity continued to attract more and more material until the
material started to heat up and became dense enough to start the fusion of Hydrogen
to Helium.
A star spends most of its life
converting its Hydrogen to Helium Our solar system sun will eventually end all
of its Hydrogen. In about 4 billion years (In case you are worried).
(Photo credit
:seasky.org)
The next stage, burning Helium
to Carbon will cause our Sun to swell up hundreds of times its current size,
swallowing the Earth, and glowing hundreds of times brighter than it is now.
This phase of a star called the red giant phase.
The sun eventually runs out of
Helium to burn, than its core collapses into a very (!) dense and small star
known as a white dwarf, and its outer layers are released to form a planetary
nebula in an spectacular event. The planetary nebula soon disperses, and the
white dwarf is left to cool for eternity, fading into oblivion.
Pic :M57 – Planetary nebula in Lyra.
Obviously
supernova monitoring is an alternative prespective to supernova hunting.
Getting the latest discoveries from the internet and turning our telescope to
the just discovered stars to monitor their evolutions can turn out for a
wonderful and meaningful astronomy project.
We can
try and construct light curves from successive magnitude estimates in
conjuction with our cooled CCD camera. Additional information could be gathered
through some sort of collaboration with our observatory's remote controlled
spectrometer.
Once a
suspect has passed the test as being a supernova event one should contact one of the many variable star sections,
(AAVSO, JAAVSO, BAA) they may offer assistance in getting your suspect (now
supernovae) into the proper hands, where spectrographic analysis can be than
performed.
Once an
event is classified as a supernova, it would be interesting to follow your
find, through its entire apparition, estimating magnitudes, comprising light
curves and spectroscopic analysis. This information if forwarded to the many
professional institutions around the world - can possibly be used by them in 
completing
work on a particular event. .
- Type Ia SN are
binary systems, in which a white dwarf orbits a large, but less dense
companion. Both stars are so close one to each other, that mass (material)
flows from the companion to the white dwarf. After some time, the dwarf star takes
on more matter than its supporting core can handle - causing it to go into
thermonuclear instability and it collapses radialically . Those are
amongst the largest explosions in the universe.
Pic : M1 – Super nova in Taurus
-
Type II SN occurs
at the end of a massive star's lifetime, when its nuclear fuel is exhausted. If
the star's iron core is massive enough, it will collapse, producing tremendous
shock waves, and become a supernova.
