this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024

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138

‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ explosion will bring a new star to the night sky (edition.cnn.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

hoping it can hold on a few more months because where i live, the night sky will not be dark enough to see a single star

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Jail?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Scandinavia... and yeah, when it comes to weather, definitely jail. Global warming is reforming it, though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Climate change will have some positive impacts in northern latitudes. Not enough to offset the deep political instability fromassive waves of climate refugees, but a win is a win

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

New? Pfft barely refurbished if you ask me.

[+] [email protected] -16 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (5 children)

Astronomers are expecting a “new star” to appear in the night sky anytime between now and September in a celestial event that has been years in the making, according to NASA.

I mean, no. It hasn’t been years in the making, it happened a very, very long time ago. We just don’t get to see it until now.

It’s more that we’ve been anticipating the event for years.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 5 months ago

This is saying good morning to everyone at midnight levels of pedantic. Astronomers need a common reference frame for discussing timing, and the reference frame they use is "when it's observed at Earth".

Because nothing else allows for coherent organization, discussion, or education.

A nuclear fusion event occurred in the accretion disk of a stellar remnant 2600 years ago or so. An astronomical event known as a nova will occur in the sky sometime this summer.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Read up on reference frames.

Discussing astronomical events would be incredibly tedious if we had to qualify everything by how many light years away / how long ago the light we’re measuring was created.

Put another way - everyone already knows we’re looking at the past, it’s like saying the sky is blue.

[–] fuzzzerd 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This has always confused me, but reference frames makes conceptual sense to me.

Even still, I like to think about how long ago what I'm seeing now actually occurred.

For example when we see a planet in our solar system in the sky we know it's still technically in the past, but it's still in timescales humans can relate to.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes, and if you want to take it to pedantic extremes, EVERYTHING you see is in the past because it takes at least 13ms for your eyes to transmit signals to your brain, and your brain to interpret the signals. (This is based on recent research from MIT but it's far from definitive, point being it takes time for our meat computers to interpret reality) That's why the whole argument is a bit silly.

Astronomy is just that, adding orders of magnitude the further away something is.

[–] fuzzzerd 2 points 5 months ago

I'm in agreement with you, cause even with the eye/brain processing time, you still have the time for light to reflect off whatever you're seeing and hit your eyes. So there's definitely some delays.

I think the interesting part for me, is when the orders of magnitude make a difference on the human scale

The few milliseconds it takes light to reflect and my brain to process it is not really tangible, but knowing that this nova in OP occurred thousands of years ago and is just reaching out eyes now is worth noting, IMO.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

You must be really fun at parties.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

a very, very long time ago

Some precision here would be appreciated

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

This binary system, T. Coronae Borealis, is 2500 light years away. That means the event we're about to witness actually occurred 2500 years ago, and the light that it emitted is just about to reach our solar system.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Years in the making is correct. Whether it's 5 years or 5 billion years, that's years in the making.