Space Warps Talk

How would a supernova appear in these images?

  • Mjtbarrett by Mjtbarrett

    Orange galaxy at 3o'clock ish has a blue voorwerpje looking cloud and a bright spot.?? I just wondered if it could be a supernova?? If not, what would a supernova appear like in these images please?

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  • AlexandredOr by AlexandredOr

    Hi ! Would say no, probably overlapping galaxy. A SN must be bright, small and circular I think in this kind of images..

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  • Mjtbarrett by Mjtbarrett

    Thanks alexandredOr. The bright spot that I am referring to is a tiny bright yellow spot at the top of the core of the orange galaxy. It is small bright and (approximately) circular...

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  • Tom_Collett by Tom_Collett scientist

    Hi Mjtbarrett, good question. AlexandredOr is right that SN would have to be circular. There is a minimum size due to the resolution of the telescope (limited mostly by atmospheric effects); if something is intrinsically smaller than the resolution limit, it gets smeared out into a circle. Any feature in the images that is smaller than the faintest stars is probably just noise or an instrumental effect. My money would be on a cosmic ray hitting the detector when the green image was taken; these are normally removed, but it isn't a perfect system.

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  • Mjtbarrett by Mjtbarrett

    Thanks both 😃

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