PNW talks this week, A new supernova in a nearby galaxy!

May 22, 2023   Issue #567

Subscribers are a sudden burst of light in the dark

Shameless Self-Promotion

Where I’ll be doing things you can watch and listen to or read about

Traveling talk news!

On May 22, 2023 (tomorrow!) I’ll be at Town Hall Seattle (in Washington state) giving my “Under Alien Skies” talk based on my new book.

Then, two days later on May 24 I’ll be in Portland Oregon to do it again for Science on Tap at the Alberta Rose Theater! Those links have the info you need to attend.

I haven’t been to either town in a long time, so I’m excited to visit again. I will likely eat my weight in salmon. I’ll have to look into what’s the best ice cream in both locales, too. Honestly, that’s the reason I travel at all.

And I’d love to give this talk in other places! Know a library, museum, science center, teacher conference, university, planetarium, book store, brewery, winery, rich person dinner party, scifi con, corporate motivational retreat, TV production company brainstorming session, secret Illuminati world control meeting, or the like? Tell them to contact my agent, Beth Quittman of Samara Lectures, and I’ll bring the Universe to you.

Astronomy News

It’s a big Universe. Here’s a thing about it.

Well, this is exciting: a supernova has just been found in the relatively nearby galaxy M101!

The exploding star, called SN 2023ixf*, was discovered by astronomer Koichi Itagaki (who has discovered over 100 supernovae, yegads) on May 19, so just days ago. Observations taken just hours later showed it’s a core collapse event, meaning the progenitor was a massive star at the end of its life. Short version: A massive star runs out of fuel, the core collapses, complicated physics occurs, and the star explodes, creating a lot of energy.

Longer version: Well, just watch the episode of Crash Course Astronomy on this.

M101 is a lovely face-on spiral galaxy about 21 million light-years from Earth, which is close on a cosmic scale. That means the light we see from this exploding star left that galaxy during the early Miocene period, long before humans walked the Earth. It also means this event is far too far away to affect us physically, in case that’s the sort of thing you worry about. “Nearby” for astronomers means something very different than for normal people.

Lots of images are available online, but I’m not sure if can use them here without permission. I’m about to go on travel and I don’t have time to email people, so instead I’ll link to NASA’s Swift observatory image, and the discovery image. Lots more will be flooding the ‘net soon enough. If you want to keep track of this supernova, the IAU Supernova Working Group has a page with technical details.

Right now as I write this you need a decent telescope to see SN2023ixf — it’s at roughly 12th magnitude — but it’s possible it could brighten to about 8th magnitude, meaning it wouldn’t be hard to see even in binoculars. It usually takes two weeks for a core collapse supernova to reach maximum brightness, so I expect that’ll be in early June. However, there’s a lot of variation in these kinds of explosions, so it may happen sooner, or later, or not get as bright as I predict. These things are hard to tell in advance. We’ll know a lot more soon.

If you’re an astronomer with even a small ‘scope and a digital camera, get to work! This is a fantastic chance to get nice images of a pretty rare event. If it clears up here (we’ve had a spate of rotten weather) I may try to look for it myself; M101 is in Ursa Major and near the zenith once the sky gets dark, so pretty nice placement for folks in the northern hemisphere.

The last one I saw with my own eyes was SN 2014J in M82, which was just barely visible in my 20-cm telescope. Hopefully this new one will get brighter!

* Supernovae are designated by the letters SN, the year, and then a series of letters given to them in order of their confirmation chronologically. It’s a little confusing how those letters work, but I wrote a whole issue of this newsletter about that which may help.

Et alia

You can email me at [email protected] (though replies can take a while), and all my social media outlets are gathered together at about.me. Also, if you don’t already, please subscribe to this newsletter! And feel free to tell a friend or nine, too. Thanks!