Astronomers Spot Brightest Supernova Ever Recorded

Is There a Brighter One to Come?

NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope has detected the brightest exploding star event ever recorded, NASA announced on Monday, May 7.

The massive exploding star, called a supernova, has been dubbed SN2006gy, and is approximately 240 million light years away in the galaxy NGC 1260. Observations of the event were made by both the orbiting Chandra X-ray telescope as well as ground-based telescopes.

Supernova SN2006gy was discovered in September 2006 by a Texas graduate student. The explosion was said to be massive, in the area of 100 times more powerful than typical supernovae. According to NASA, the brightness of SN2006gy peaked for 70 days. Observations to date have shown that most supernovae peak for at most a few weeks. In addition, Chandra showed that SN2006gy did not become a black hole, as is usually the case after such a massive star explodes.

A great deal of mass was ejected from the star that resulted in the supernova prior to the explosion. This type of mass ejection has also been seen in a star that is, relatively speaking, a very close stellar neighbor of ours, the star Eta Carinae. The scenario of mass ejection is very similar to that of SN2006gy, which has astronomers wondering if Eta Carinae may have the same fate in store for it.

This most recent supernova, SN2006gy, may be the brightest ever viewed from earth so far, but it is 240 million light years away. On the other hand, Eta Carinae is a mere 7,500 light years away-right here in our own Milky Way Galaxy.

Should Eta Carinae indeed suffer the same fate as the distant star that was once supernova SN2006gy, it would be an understatement to say that the view from earth would be spectacular. The light from Eta Carinae's supernova would allow people to read a book or a newspaper outdoors comfortably in the middle of the night. Provided they lived in the southern hemisphere, that is. Eta Carinae isn't visible from the northern hemisphere.