Physics Photo of the
Week
September 16, 2011
Major Supernova in M101
There was a major discovery
on August 24 of a major supernova in a fairly close galaxy,
M101 - the "Pinwheel Galaxy". This supernova was
discovered by the Polomar Transient Factory - an automatic
system of imaging galaxies looking for new astronomical
objects. This has since brightened to be brightest
supernova to be visible from Earth for more than 20
years.
On Sept. 14, Warren Wilson students: Alexandra Boeling, Josh
Carpenter, Grace Hatton, Anna Louise Long, and Chris O'Leary helped me
obtain WWC's first image of the new supernova in spite of
partial cloudiness.
The spiral galaxy, M101, is easily visible in this
photograph. The supernova, designated SN2011 fe is the
brightest star in the image - located in the lower center of
the image. The impressive feature of the supernova is
how bright it is. No individual stars can be resolved in
the galaxy (21 million light 
years
distant). About 100 billion stars are all blended
together into the hazy spiral structure with most stars
located in the central nucleus. The clumpiness of the
spirals are major stellar clusters in the galaxy. All
the other distinct stars in the image are quite close within
our own Milky Way galaxy. The local stars are perhaps no
more than 400 light years distant. Since the supernova
is quite a bit brighter than the field stars, and is 50,000 times
further away, the supernova has an intrinsic brightness of
over 2.5
billion suns!
In April 2008 astronomy students (Emma Berger-Singer, Forrest Brown, Sean Moffit, and Phil Waidner) helped me
image the same galaxy. Little did we know that the light
from the supernova was only 2 1/2 light years from reaching
the Earth having been en-route for about 21 million
years. It is interesting to compare the 2008 image with
the new image in the blink comparison at the right.
Even though the new supernova is the brightest observed in a
number of years, it requires a telescope to observe. It
is easily observable with WWC's 8-inch telescope (donated by
Bernard Arghierre) and the CCD camera (provided by the AAS
Small Projects Grant).
Physics
Photo of the
Week is
published weekly during the academic year on Fridays by
the Warren
Wilson College Physics
Department. These photos feature interesting
phenomena in
the world around us. Students, faculty, and others
are invited to
submit digital (or film) photographs for publication and
explanation. Atmospheric phenomena are especially
welcome.
Please send any photos to dcollins@warren-wilson.edu.
All photos and discussions are copyright by
Donald
Collins or by the person credited for the photo and/or
discussion. These photos and discussions may be used
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