Posted on 09/17/2021 7:20:16 AM PDT by BenLurkin
In the year 1181 AD, a new bright point of light as luminous as the planet Saturn appeared to Chinese and Japanese skygazers for a little more than six months before disappearing. Hundreds of years later, researchers believe they have finally found the source of this mysterious appearance.
The event, like the famous Crab Nebula-forming stellar explosion of 1054, is one of just a handful of bright nearby flashes noted in historical records, but unlike the Crab Nebula, the 1181 spectacle was tricky to pin down.
The historical record leaves a few clues that have been useful to modern astronomers. First, the timing: this "guest star" shined for 185 days, from Aug. 6, 1181, to Feb. 6, 1182. The record also indicates its place in the sky, which was a spot located between two Chinese constellations, Chuanshe and Huagai, near the modern Cassiopeia.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Did you ping this out previously? The story looks familiar but I couldn’t find it by searching.
I admit that I have trouble grasping cosmic scales. Light years, parsecs, billions of years ... it’s hard to picture things at such scales.
But, having said that, if a star explodes, and we see the bright light for 6 months or so, that seems quite brief. Sure, with instruments we could detect fainter light over a longer time. I know that the nova itself didn’t start and stop over just a 6 month period. But, still, in terms of visible light seen by the naked eye, for a massive star to explode and just come and go in 6 months seems pretty counter-intuitive to me.
This is not new news, the Nova and the Crab Nebula ... I read about this 40 years ago, maybe more.
Disappointing our “scientific journals” have become tabloids, and/or agitprop like Scientific American.
Ping!.....................
Wrong nebula, old chap.
Wrong Nebula.
Different supernova....................
ping
Thanks for the corrections, gentlemen.
Irritates me to be wrong. Glad to get it right.
I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken....................
My Dad used to say that ... )
Your dad was a wise man, and there aren’t too many of us left.........................
The only mistake I ever made was that one time when I paid extra for the pencils that came with erasers on the end of them.
3C 58 snr bkmk
Cosmic scales. Think of it this way. If our Sun were the size of a pea the nearest star, Proxima Centauri would be 125 miles away. The Sun is about 860,000 miles in diameter. The distances are just impossible to really comprehend.
A Supernova continues to put out a lot of energy for a long time. But the initial event is extremely cataclysmic. There are a lot of very informative astronomy videos on youtube. Search around sometime and prepare to be fascinated.
Nova SS
That’s supposed to be a comet - maybe Halley’s
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