On Jun 19, 11:43*am, HK wrote:
- while others "race" motorbikes:

Teenage girl discovers new type of supernova
by Keith Pickering
Daily KOS

Fri Jun 19, 2009 at 07:33:52 AM PDT

On November 6, 2008, Caroline Moore of Warwick, New York discovered a
supernova in galaxy UGC 12682, in the constellation Pegasus.
Caroline3scopes

Caroline is 14 years old, and is the youngest person to ever discover a
supernova.

Caroline and her father Bob are part of the Puckett Observatory
Supernova Search Team. The team was founded by dedicated amateur
astronomer Tim Puckett of Georgia in 1997, and currently has several
dozen members around the world. They have an impressive record, having
racked up 191 supernova discoveries to date.

The team has four computer-automated telescopes at work in British
Columbia, Arizona, Georgia, and South Africa, collecting images of
thousands of galaxies every clear night. Thousands of galaxies, and
dozens of astronomers — that math isn't good. Often new images are
collected too fast to analyze. Sharp new eyes are always needed, so when
Caroline looked at the image of UGC 12682 last November, the photo was
already two months days old. But Caroline saw something there, just
barely, that she didn't see on the reference image of the galaxy.

* * *"I'm going to send it in. I think it's something," she told her
father. A couple nights later, her suspicions were confirmed. "We got
confirmation very late at night," said Bob Moore. "I had to drag her out
of bed, and she just started laughing."

SN2008ha

What Caroline discovered is now known as SN2008ha, and it turns out to
be a very interesting object — in fact, it is an entirely new class of
supernova, never before seen.

The spectrum of the supernova was all hydrogen, which is the signature
of a classic Type I supernova. But the supernova itself was dim, far
dimmer than any Type I supernova — or indeed, any supernova of any type
— ever observed. It was about 1000 times dimmer than a typical Type I,
but was still 1000 times brighter than a typical (non-super) nova.
SN2008ha turns out to be a totally unique object.

* * *"If a normal supernova is a nuclear bomb, then SN 2008ha is a
bunker buster," said team leader Ryan Foley, Clay fellow at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and first author on the
paper reporting the findings. "From one perspective, this supernova was
an underachiever, however you still wouldn't want be anywhere near the
star when it exploded."
* * *Caroline was able to discover the object using a relatively small
telescope, but some of the most advanced telescopes in the world were
needed to determine the nature of the explosion. Data came from the
Magellan telescopes in Chile, the MMT telescope in Arizona, the Gemini
and Keck telescopes in Hawaii, and NASA's Swift satellite.

- - -

Ms. Moore will likely be someone of signicance in tomorrow's world. Some
other gals, well, the world needs maids, too.

--"John H" wrote in message

...

* Please note that Interstate 90 will be closed this weekend across
* South Dakota. This closure will allow the Federal Government free
* access to haul a 200 ton piece of coal to Mt. Rushmore so that
* President Obama can be added to the Presidents on the monument.
* --
* John H

--

John Herring, rec.boat's resident racist and accident waiting to happen.

Harry, how in the world do you know what the girls hobbies are? She
could very likely race motorcycles. My daughter, a gifted straight A
student actually still has a life outside of academics. Right now
she's at camp for a week doing very dangerous things like riding
horses, making and using giant slip and slides, swimming, running,
etc. She has several hobbies that, although a very bright and studious
young lady, has nothing to do with education. No wonder your kids
won't have anything to do with you.