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When NASA’s Kepler Telescope looked into space, it also looked back in time.
Locked in a heliocentric orbit, Kepler was to gradually follow the Earth, offering the telescope a unique view of the universe.
This is how we know that a billion years ago a yellow supergiant, a star 100 times the size of the Sun, collapsed on itself and then bounced back, sending out a shock wave and debris as it expanded in a cataclysmic explosion.
“The light we were seeing had actually left this star a billion years ago,” Patrick Armstrong, a doctoral student at the Australian National University and lead author of a study published this month, told Al Jazeera. the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. .
He adds that scientists were lucky that Kepler looked in that direction at this precise moment. While stars live for billions of years, they often die within weeks, with the explosion and shock wave themselves visible only for a few days.
Kepler’s groundbreaking data comes three years after the telescope went out of service in 2018, when it ran out of fuel after nine years of operation.
As the first NASA mission to investigate the exoplanets of our galaxy, Kepler leaves behind an extraordinary legacy, having identified thousands of exoplanets orbiting stars, many of which existed in arrangements that do not exist. had not been designed before, including planets orbiting two stars. . Kepler also discovered planets that were likely to be water or the size of Earth.
Precision photometry
If Kepler had any super power, however, it was his ability to measure a star’s brightness at a tiny fraction of a percent – he was equipped with precision photometry to allow him to track the tiny gradation in the sky. glare of a star caused by the passage of a planet in front of it.
And gazing at unique patches of space for long periods of time has provided the happy bonus of unlocking a vast treasure trove of other cosmic treasures – including historically difficult to track phenomena like supernovae, which appear and disappear quickly.
Brad Tucker, one of the study’s co-authors and Armstrong’s supervisor at ANU, takes a look at what Kepler has returned since 2013.
“A star explodes about every 100 years in your average galaxy, and Kepler has allowed us to stack the bridge by being able to monitor tens of thousands of galaxies,” Tucker said, adding that he was convinced the telescope still had a lot to offer, with new research on supernovae based on Kepler’s data expected to be published even in the coming months.
“Kepler gives us so much data, and in such a unique way, it takes a long time to examine, analyze and study it. And so, I think we’ll look to Kepler even in the future.
Supernova data is unprecedented, the first to offer a clear view of the progression of the shock wave that passes through a star at the end of its life – starting with the first moments of the explosion.
As part of the Kepler 2 survey, the telescope was trained over a single patch of sky for approximately 80 days. Every 30 minutes he would take a photo of what he was seeing. On the other hand, a telescope on the ground could only have made observations at night.
“The difference between looking through a ground telescope and Kepler is the difference between watching a slide show and watching a movie,†Armstrong explained, adding, “So we were really excited about the high quality of data we were seeing.â€
Armstrong and his team used the data to test several models and looked at the “shock-cooling light curve” which measured the change in the amount of light emitted by the supernova over time.
Now SN2017jgh, the name given to the supernova, promises to help scientists better understand how stars live and die.
“We usually don’t capture a supernova for a few days or even a few weeks afterwards – it’s still rare to see those first moments,†Tucker said. “Now we know which model to use, and so we can make better use of all these other supernovae observations, we need to understand other stars as well.”
Astronomers from @scienceANU ran an intl. team of researchers to make the first observations of the light emitted just at the time of a supernova explosion! https://t.co/GLxBmRK2xW#SpaceAustralia @ANUmedia @ btucker22
NASA pic.twitter.com/U4JHVTJ7dQ
– SpaceAustralia.com (@SpaceAusDotCom) August 12, 2021
Answer the big questions
Studying a supernova can reveal many details about a star, including its size and composition. The explosion itself creates a primordial soup of protons and neutrons and can eventually lead to the birth of new planets and stars.
However, researchers are also intrigued by supernovae, because their study helps answer some of the big questions about the universe.
Armstrong explains that analyzing the light of specific types of supernovae can allow researchers to identify how quickly the universe is expanding and accelerating. “It all has to do with our understanding of where the universe came from and what it is made of and things like that,†he said.
Researchers are now eagerly awaiting data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which launched in 2018 and completed its main mission in 2020 before starting an extended mission phase.
While Kepler’s mission was primarily statistical – to find out whether Earth-sized exoplanets were common – TESS is designed to identify specific exoplanet systems that should be investigated further.
Tucker explains that TESS just sees more volume and that by providing more observations than Kepler, TESS will feel like it’s going from a 1080p display to a 4k. Such tools make them an exciting time for astronomy, researchers say.
“We’re starting to literally see the universe in a way we’ve never seen before,†Tucker said. “We had this view that the universe is a somewhat static place with a lot of things that don’t change or things that only last for billions of years, but the more we look, the more we realize how great our universe is. dynamic and evolving. “
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