Supernova Detective Story
Pythagorean Astronomy
English - September 30, 2021 12:00 - 22 minutes - 20.6 MB - ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsNatural Sciences Science space astronomy news science research Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
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Way back in 1181 AD, astronomers in China and Japan recorded a "guest star" - something that we'd now call a supernova. Over 800 years later, astronomers made a connection between this ancient observation and more recent studies of a very unusual object that goes by the name of "Parker's Star".
Prof Quentin Parker, from University of Hong Kong, explains how he and his team made the link, displacing a previously favoured object. And it seems that this was no common or garden supernova, but an incredibly rare "Type 1ax" supernova.