My Opera
March 19th 2008 2:12am
Saturday, July 26, 2008 7:01:35 AM
Star explodes halfway across universe
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/03/21/exploding.star.ap/index.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The explosion of a star halfway across the universe was so huge it set a record for the most distant object that could be seen on Earth by the naked eye..
The aging star, in a previously unknown galaxy, exploded in a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, its light finally reaching Earth early Wednesday..
The gamma rays were detected by NASA's Swift satellite at 2:12 a.m.. "We'd never seen one before so bright and at such a distance," NASA's Neil Gehrels said..
It was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye..
However, NASA has no reports that any skywatchers spotted the burst, which lasted less than an hour..
Telescopic measurements show that the burst -- which occurred when the universe was about half its current age -- was bright enough to be seen without a telescope..
"Someone would have had to run out and look at it with a naked eye, but didn't," said Gehrels, chief of NASA's astroparticles physics lab at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md..
The starburst would have appeared as bright as some of the stars in the handle of the Little Dipper constellation, said Penn State University astronomer David Burrows. How it looked wasn't remarkable, but the distance traveled was..
The 7.5 billion light years away far eclipses the previous naked eye record of 2.5 million light years. One light year is 5.9 trillion miles..
"This is roughly halfway to the edge of the universe," Burrows said..
Before it exploded, the star was about 40 times bigger than our sun. The explosion vaporized any planet nearby, Gehrels said..
We are but a tiny spec in this infinite universe.. This is a model of the planets in our solar system and the sizes of stars which have been found.. Did you know our sun is like a spec of dust compared to the other stars in the universe? The Sun is a yellow dwarf.. See for yourself.. This video shows the perspective of how large stars are relative to our sun.. The largest star found has the Volume of 7 Billion Suns..
PROFOUND!
We should not forget, however, that the closest star (besides our Sun) is so far away from Earth that travel between the two would take more than a human lifetime.. The fact that it takes our Sun about 200 million years to revolve once around the Milky Way gives one a glimpse of the perspective we have to take of interstellar travel.. We are 500 light-seconds from the sun.. The next nearest star to Earth's sun (Alpha Centauri) is about 4 light-years away.. That might sound close, but it is actually something like 24 trillion miles away.. Even traveling at one million miles an hour, it would take more than 2,500 years to get there.. To get there in twenty-five years would require traveling at more than 100 million miles an hour for the entire trip..* Our fastest spacecraft, Voyager, travels at about 40,000 miles an hour and would take 70,000 years to get to Alpha Centauri..
And here is something even more amazing
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/03/21/exploding.star.ap/index.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The explosion of a star halfway across the universe was so huge it set a record for the most distant object that could be seen on Earth by the naked eye..
The aging star, in a previously unknown galaxy, exploded in a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, its light finally reaching Earth early Wednesday..
The gamma rays were detected by NASA's Swift satellite at 2:12 a.m.. "We'd never seen one before so bright and at such a distance," NASA's Neil Gehrels said..
It was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye..
However, NASA has no reports that any skywatchers spotted the burst, which lasted less than an hour..
Telescopic measurements show that the burst -- which occurred when the universe was about half its current age -- was bright enough to be seen without a telescope..
"Someone would have had to run out and look at it with a naked eye, but didn't," said Gehrels, chief of NASA's astroparticles physics lab at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md..
The starburst would have appeared as bright as some of the stars in the handle of the Little Dipper constellation, said Penn State University astronomer David Burrows. How it looked wasn't remarkable, but the distance traveled was..
The 7.5 billion light years away far eclipses the previous naked eye record of 2.5 million light years. One light year is 5.9 trillion miles..
"This is roughly halfway to the edge of the universe," Burrows said..
Before it exploded, the star was about 40 times bigger than our sun. The explosion vaporized any planet nearby, Gehrels said..
PROFOUND!
We should not forget, however, that the closest star (besides our Sun) is so far away from Earth that travel between the two would take more than a human lifetime.. The fact that it takes our Sun about 200 million years to revolve once around the Milky Way gives one a glimpse of the perspective we have to take of interstellar travel.. We are 500 light-seconds from the sun.. The next nearest star to Earth's sun (Alpha Centauri) is about 4 light-years away.. That might sound close, but it is actually something like 24 trillion miles away.. Even traveling at one million miles an hour, it would take more than 2,500 years to get there.. To get there in twenty-five years would require traveling at more than 100 million miles an hour for the entire trip..* Our fastest spacecraft, Voyager, travels at about 40,000 miles an hour and would take 70,000 years to get to Alpha Centauri..
And here is something even more amazing
