Tag Archives: supernova

A supernova…

Well…let’s get away from politics for a minute and talk a little astronomy…on the 19th, an amateur astronomer saw a supernova in the galaxy M101…and. as you know, since the galaxy is 21 million light years away, it actually happened 21 million years ago and the light is just getting to us now…it is the closest supernova to Earth in almost a decade…it has continued to brighten over the past few days an will probably get almost bright enough to see with a small telescope which I wish I had…that would be so cool to see the light first hand…supernovas happen when a star runs out of hydrogen and start to fuse other elements like helium and oxygen until the star gets to trying to fuse iron that the star doesn’t have the energy to do so the star collapses and then explodes to make a supernova…and that process can happen very quickly…in some stars it only takes minutes for the entire process…so, pretty cool to think about other things than politics for a change…