An amateur astronomer from Nelson has played a key role in discovering what could be the “most luminous” supernova ever detected – all from his own observatory, tucked away in the backyard of his Washington Valley property.
Brent Nicholls has been working with a group of professional astronomers from Ohio State University, who run the ASASSN project (All Sky Automated Survey for Supernova), to find the rare exploded star which, at its brightest, was 570 billion times bright than the sun.
The keen astronomer says he’s only had his own observatory for the past four or five years, with his 30 cm telescope on loan from a friend in Canterbury, but it’s been his main hobby for the past three decades.
Brent says the ASASSN group, who are mostly located in the northern hemisphere, observe the sky every night, looking for transient objects. He is only the Kiwi to belong to the group.
“When new objects are picked up, an alert is sent out to half a dozen of us who follow it up, getting more detailed pictures,” he says. “If there’s something there we pick it up straight away and it goes onto what’s called the ‘astronomers’ telegram,’ which is where all the discoveries go.”
Brent was the first to get confirmation of this particular object, which was first observed last June. The supernova is almost four billion light years from Earth and will be able to be seen for another year or so with the humble telescope before it fizzles out.
“We think it’s a very big star that’s come to the end of its life and collapsed, and as it has collapsed it’s formed a neutron star in the middle,” he says. “It continues to collapse, but the material has bounced off and that’s ripped the rest apart and that’s the light we see.”
Brent, who has had been part of the ASASSN team for the past 18 months, says they found 179 supernova last year alone.
The group is planning to use the Hubble Space Telescope later this year to get a closer look at the supernova’s host galaxy for clues to what triggered the blast.
The discovery will also feature in an article written by Subo Dong from Peking University, which will be published in Science magazine.
