A massive faraway star explosion was the biggest supernova that scientists have ever seen.
A star that was 150 times as massive as the Sun explosed out of our galaxy and shined 5 times brighter than other explosions. The supernova occured 238 million light-years away. Scientists could only imagine such a big supernova, but they have never observed any.
Supernova is an astronomic term that means the explosion of a star. Stars exhaust their fuel and explode. Some of supernovas occur when stars collapse under their own gravity, some others when stars collapse under the tremendous gravity into black holes or neutron stars.
Usually supenovas pick in couple of weeks, at the most, but this one peaked for 70 days. The explosion was shining so bright that it could be seen even in daytime and it could be possible to read a book at night.
"We've discovered a supernova that stands out as by far and away the most powerful and brightest that has ever been observed," said astrophysicist Nathan Smith, of the University of California, Berkeley, who led the studies. "The reason we are so excited is that it may require a new type of explosive mechanism that has been predicted theoretically but not observed before."
The supernova is designated as SN 2006gy and was discovered in September 2006, but it was exploded long ago. The explosion was discovered by University of Texas graduate student Robert Quimby using observations from Nasa's orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory and earthbound optical telescopes.
There is only one star that could be compared with this exploding one scientists have ever met - it's Eta Carinae, which is in Milky Way galaxy and is 100 to 120 times as massive as sun. It is 7,500 light years away within the Milky Way.
"We think 2006gy was very similar to Eta Carinae in our own galaxy, and a galactic supernova would be a spectacular event," said Livio. "It would be so bright you could see it in the daylight. You could read a book by it at night."
By Ruzan Harutyunyan for HULIQ
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