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Strange supernova puzzles scientists
At first glance, the object discovered on 22 February in the constellation Bootes resembled an ordinary supernova. But it kept growing brighter for much too long, and its spectrum was abnormal.
The mysterious object was spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys and took at least 100 days to reach peak brightness, says Kyle Dawson of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, US, a member of the Supernova Cosmology Project. Normal supernovas reach peak brightness about 20 days after the blast.
The mysterious object was spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys and took at least 100 days to reach peak brightness, says Kyle Dawson of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, US, a member of the Supernova Cosmology Project. Normal supernovas reach peak brightness about 20 days after the blast.
Hubble saw nothing on 29 January at the point in the sky where the object appeared, so it must have brightened by more than a factor of 200. It has just begun to fade.
The object's spectrum is also unusual. The researchers could find no matches when they compared it with objects in the wide-ranging Sloan Digital Sky Survey. And its colour has not changed since it was first observed. Normally, temperature changes after an explosion cause colour changes.
Website: http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn9360-enigmatic-object-baffles-supernova-team.html TECHNOLOGY ARTICLES
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