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Every clear night for the past three weeks, Bob Stevens has been aiming his home telescope at two particular stars in the distance, hoping to witness one of the most violent cosmic events ever: a supernova, a stellar explosion that emits a 100,000-times-brighter light than the sun.
The Los Angeles Times reported that this explosion, which scientists expect to occur any day now, has attracted the attention of major observatories around the world, and provides an opportunity for scientists to enhance their understanding of turbulent binary star systems.
It is surprising that astrophysicists have relied on countless amateur astronomers, like Stevens, to be the first to spot the explosion, despite the high-tech observing power that NASA can muster.
This is due to the high cost of keeping their equipment focused on monitoring the star for months in anticipation of its explosion.
“I think everyone will be looking at the explosion as it happens, but sitting in the observatories just looking at the star won’t make the explosion happen,” says Tom Meneghini, director of telescope operations and honorary executive director of Mount Wilson Observatory. “It’s like a cooking pot that you’re watching until the food is done.”
The star is so far away that its light takes 3,000 years to reach Earth, meaning the expected explosion already occurred before the Egyptian pyramids were built, and its bright light is expected to appear like a star pointing north for only a few days before fading into darkness, Meneghini explains.
Once the explosion is spotted, some of the most advanced observatories on Earth and in space will join in the viewing, including NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
“A lot of people are eagerly awaiting the discovery of the new jewel in the crown,” said Mansi Kasliwal, an astronomy professor at the California Institute of Technology, who plans to use the Palomar Observatory in northeastern San Diego County to observe the event. The supernova is expected to explode in the constellation of stars known as the Northern Crown.
The star that is about to explode is actually thought to be two stars, one a hot, dense white dwarf and the other a cooler red giant.
This dwarf star, which has long run out of fuel and is now roughly the size of Earth, has been sucking hydrogen gas from its giant neighbor for nearly as long as humans have existed on Earth.
Over time, the stolen gas accumulates in a cylinder around the dwarf star, like a hot, chaotic version of Saturn's rings. This cylinder will soon grow so large that it becomes violent and unruly, and then inevitably explode like a thermonuclear bomb.
However, neither star is destroyed, and this process repeats itself approximately every 80 years.
And as the world waits for the star to explode, an army of enthusiasts, like Stevens, are ready to sound the alarm when the moment of explosion comes.
These people are not just amateurs, as several of them have published their own scientific research, and Stevens even set up his own observatory at his home in Rancho Cucamonga, California.
Every night, Stevens will turn on his telescope, spending more than an hour recording data that he then broadcasts online to a community of amateur astronomers who watch the star almost nonstop.
Large observatories cannot keep up with the observations, and hundreds of scientists are competing for time to look at a wide range of astronomical targets each night. They see keeping telescopes fixed to watch this bright star as a waste of valuable observing time.
Estimates vary regarding the expected time of the star's explosion, but most astrophysicists agree that the explosion will occur before the end of this year, most likely at the end of August.
When an explosion occurs, there are a limited number of alert systems set up to notify amateurs and professionals, and Stevens says that a number of observatories have programmed their telescopes independently of the current monitoring plan to track the star when the explosion notification comes.
On the other hand, some of the larger observatories face another complication. Many of their telescopes are designed to observe the faintest and most dim targets, but this star about to explode does not belong to this category, so pointing telescopes at it would overwhelm the sensors, resulting in faint and blurry images.
That's why the Palomar Observatory, a Caltech research station in northern San Diego, doesn't use the famous 16-foot-wide Halley telescope under its massive white dome. Instead, it uses a much smaller telescope known as the Gatineau-IR, housed in an inconspicuous brick building a quarter-mile down the road.
Scientists say they still have a lot to learn about exploding stars. For example, physicists are still not sure why some stars explode every decade, while others only explode every thousands of years.
