Giant exploding star spotted

Press, 24 September 1988, Page 15

Giant exploding star spotted

NZPA-Reuter Santiago Scientists at an observatory in northern Chile have spotted a giant exploding star which split apart about the time the Sun and the planets were formed five billion years ago. The star, which was discovered on August 9, is the most distant celestial object to be seen, the

European Southern Observatory said. The light from the supernova, the name given to exploding stars, was four million times fainter than could be detected by the naked eye and had taken five billion years to reach Earth. Light travels 9.6 trillion kilometres in a year. The star was spotted by a Danish astronomer,

Hans Ulrik NorgaardNielsen, at the E.S.O.’s observatory at La Silla, at the foot of the Andes mountains, 600 km north of Santiago. The explosion, in an inconspicuous cluster of galaxies known as ACUB, appeared to have been detected within a week of the light being first visible. But by September 6 it had become too faint to be seen, the observatory

said. A nearby Canadian observatory made what was billed as the find of the century in February 1987, when an astronomer spotted the brightest supernova to be seen in 400 years. That supernova, which exploded 150,000 light years ago, was calculated to be emitting light equivalent to 100 million suns.