In early June a new Supernova was discovered. A supernova is the end point of a massive star where the thermal fire at the core of the star runs out of fuel, ending its life in an extremely bright explosion (see our SpaceBook page on high-mass stars for more information). The supernova is outside of our galaxy in the Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as M51. The galaxy is face on allowing observers to clearly see its beautiful spiral arms.
Fortunately, this galaxy is easily observable for moderate to large sized telescopes and because it is such an attractive example of a spiral galaxy it is frequently imaged. An important step to understanding a supernova explosion is identifying which type of star has exploded. This can only be done by looking through archives of astronomical data and matching the position of the supernova with star in an older image. Fortunately many observations already exist, but there is still some controversy about the exact nature of the progenitor star (see http://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.3551v1 for more details of the controversy).
Once a supernova has been discovered it is essential to monitor how the brightness changes with time. This will allow us to tell more astronomers all sorts of interesting physics e.g. about the type of supernova it was, varify the massive of the original star, whether more than one star was involved, and verify how closely it match theories the physics of supernovae. We were very lucky that this supernova explosion (called SN2011dh) was discovered very soon after the event occured. Using LCOGT telescopes ( Byrne Observatory Sedgwick, Faulkes Telescope North , and Faulkes Telescope South ), our supernova astronomers (led by Andy Howell) have been observing SN2011dh nearly every night since it's discovery, resulting in a high quality lightcurve.
One of our astronomers, BJ Fulton, has produced a movie of the results he has collected from BOS so far. As the brightness of the supernova changes in the image you can see how the graph changes.
Congratulations to all involved in the observing! Thanks to our educational affiliates Institute for Astronomy, Maui and the Faulkes Telescope Project, both of whose users who have been involved in observing this supernova with our 2m telescopes.
