Teh One Who Knocks
02-17-2012, 05:08 PM
Sky News
http://i.imgur.com/5rdvy.jpg
Space scientists have caught a delayed glimpse of a cosmic blast that dazzled observers when it was seen from Earth more than 150 years ago.
Astronomers are trying to unravel the mystery of an event known as the Great Eruption, in which a super-massive star 7,500 light years away began spewing out unusually large amounts of light.
It caused the star, called Eta Carinae, to appear as the second-brightest star in the sky for several years in the mid-1800s.
http://i.imgur.com/tD8kJ.jpg
Now, experts have been able to create new images of that violent blast, using a new technique that involves taking readings of delayed light that bounced off stellar dust and is only now reaching our solar system.
Armin Rest, of America's Space Telescope Science Institute, which carried out the study published in the Nature journal, said the images could help them get to the bottom of what caused the Great Eruption.
He said: "It's as if nature has left behind a surveillance tape of the event, which we are now just beginning to watch."
The pictures may also point to when Eta Carinae - more than 100 times the size of our Sun - will meet its certain death as a supernova, an enormous explosion that will light up the skies.
http://i.imgur.com/5rdvy.jpg
Space scientists have caught a delayed glimpse of a cosmic blast that dazzled observers when it was seen from Earth more than 150 years ago.
Astronomers are trying to unravel the mystery of an event known as the Great Eruption, in which a super-massive star 7,500 light years away began spewing out unusually large amounts of light.
It caused the star, called Eta Carinae, to appear as the second-brightest star in the sky for several years in the mid-1800s.
http://i.imgur.com/tD8kJ.jpg
Now, experts have been able to create new images of that violent blast, using a new technique that involves taking readings of delayed light that bounced off stellar dust and is only now reaching our solar system.
Armin Rest, of America's Space Telescope Science Institute, which carried out the study published in the Nature journal, said the images could help them get to the bottom of what caused the Great Eruption.
He said: "It's as if nature has left behind a surveillance tape of the event, which we are now just beginning to watch."
The pictures may also point to when Eta Carinae - more than 100 times the size of our Sun - will meet its certain death as a supernova, an enormous explosion that will light up the skies.