Brightest Supernova Ever Recorded is 570 Billion Times Brighter Than Sun

By Ana Verayo, | January 15, 2016

Comparison between a false-color pre-explosion image from the Dark Energy Survey and false-color follow-up image from the LCOGT 1-m network, courtesy of Benjamin Shappee.

Comparison between a false-color pre-explosion image from the Dark Energy Survey and false-color follow-up image from the LCOGT 1-m network, courtesy of Benjamin Shappee.

Astronomers have just revealed the brightest star explosion ever in the known universe, which is a super supernova that is apparently so bright, compared to all the stars combined in the Milky Way galaxy.

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The international team of scientists regard this as "the most powerful supernova ever observed in human history" and in order to detect this, astronomers used an array of telescopes positioned all over the world to search for this record breaking supernova in 2015.

Apparently, these super luminous supernovae are extremely rare as they are extra bright stellar explosions in the cosmos. However, this newly discovered supernova is twice as bright as any supernova observed to date even among other prior record breaking ones.

Scientists say that its intense peak brightness is estimated to be 20 times more luminous than the whole Milky Way, where others say that it can also reach as much as 50 times brighter. Compared to the sun's brightness, this supernova is 570 billion times brighter than the peak brightness of the sun.

According to lead author of the study Subo Dong from the Peking University in China, he was too excited to sleep at night due to this discovery when he learned about how relevant this is. According to co-author of the study, researcher Benjamin Shappee from the Carnegie Institution for Science in California, the results apparently seemed to be "surreal" at first.

Shappee reveals that this discovery is the reason why he is an astronomer, stating that, nature is considered to be extremely clever where it is often discovered later that it is more imaginative than we can be.

This incredible supernova is known as ASASSN-15lh which is detected by the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae, pronounced as "assassin". This cosmic blast was detected from a distance of 3.8 billion light years where astronomers are still pinpointing which galaxy it originated from.

According to Dong, this explosion and its power source still remain a mystery since all known theories are still in the process of identifying and explaining what kind this amount of intense energy ASASSN-15lh has radiated, reaching our solar system.

Scientists' next step is to identify the source of this powerful explosion, as other supernovae similar to this one, could also exist. Other observatories are now investigating this powerful supernova, along with other NASA spacecraft such as the Hubble Space Telescope.

This new study is published in the journal, Science.

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