10-year-old Canadian Girl Discovers Supernova

A 10-year-old girl from Canada has discovered a supernova, making her the youngest person ever to find a stellar explosion. The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada announced the discovery by Kathryn Aurora Gray of Fredericton, New Brunswick, who was assisted by astronomers Paul Gray and David Lane.

Supernova 2010lt is a magnitude-17 supernova in galaxy UGC 3378, in the constellation of Camelopardalis, as reported on IAU Electronic Telegram 2618. The galaxy was imaged on New Year’s Eve 2010, and the supernova was discovered on Jan. 2, 2011, by Kathryn and her father Paul. The observations were made from Abbey Ridge Observatory, and this is the third supernova seen from this observatory. It was Lane’s fourth supernova discovery, Paul Gray’s seventh, and Kathryn Gray’s first.

Dancing Stars Turn on the Red Light

For the first time, astronomers have watched the spiralling dance performed by two stars merging into a single star. The observations, taken between 2001 and 2008, suggest a solution to the vexed problem of how rare "red novae" form. Most novae are blue and occur when material on a white dwarf star explodes. But what causes red novae has been a mystery.

In September 2008, the red nova V1309 Scorpii appeared in the Milky Way. Fortunately, it was positioned in a part of the sky being watched by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE), a Polish-run programme using data from a telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile to search for signs of dark matter and planets. As a result, the team had inadvertently captured the process that sparked the red nova.