“first optical light” from a supernova tagged posts

Supernova 2016gkg (indicated by red bars) in the galaxy NGC 613, located about 40 million light years from Earth in the constellation Sculptor. Credit: Image by UC Santa Cruz and Las Campanas Observatory, Chile

First observation of optical light from shock breakout in a supernova explosion. First light from a supernova is hard to capture; no one can predict where and when a star will explode. An amateur astronomer has now captured on film this first light, emitted when the exploding core hits the star’s outer layers: shock breakout. Subsequent observations by astronomers using the Lick and Keck observatories helped identify it as a Type IIb supernova that slimmed down from 20 to 5 solar masses before exploding.

During tests of a new camera, Víctor Buso captured images of a distant galaxy b...