[meteorite-list] Don't Miss it...The Supernova of our time!

[MexicoDoug]

Hi Listors, Listees, Listeds and Listids ;-)

No one has posted the great opportunity to see an explosively 
fantastical honest supernova !!!

Named: SN 2011fe.  It's as big as Earth and as heavy as the Sun, a 
white dwarf undergoing a thermonuclear meltdown as we chat, now visibly 
seeding future generations of the universe with a generous helping of 
meteoritical fodder ...

It will be visible with a heavy pair of binoculars for the next week, 
but better a small telescope.  The magnitude probably won't get 
brighter than 8 (it is currently 10-11 and may not make it past that, 
though ... uncertainty in brightness is part of the fun).  It is 
located in the Pinwheel Galaxy, around 20 million light years away 
which is extremely close as these events go.

It isn't the one-in-a-hundred lustra (=each 500 years) supernova of 
Biblical proportions that occur in the Milky Way like the last two 
around the 1500's - Tycho's and Kepler's Star supernovae.  That's when 
we get a supernova inside our own galaxy that can be seen during the 
daytime for months, but this is likely our only chance so time to play 
our hand of cards for what we can, we are probably more fortunate than 
most generations.  As a matter of fact:

There has been only one observed supernova in the northern latitudes as 
bright or brighter since Kepler's and Tycho's, and that was in the 
nearby Andromeda Galaxy in 1885.  That was while Geronimo was still on 
the loose in Arizona and when Louis Pasteur developed a vaccine for 
rabies ... but before the Kodak film camera!

With the relationships supernovae have to meteorites and the proposed 
event that triggered the formation of the solar system, not to mention 
providing interesting elements to the local recycle bin of the 
universe's scrap heap, right up to the reason we may have enough heavy 
metals to activate the vitamins in our bodies ... this is an event not 
to miss.

It is in Ursa Major, in the asterism we call the "Big Dipper" in these 
parts, and "The Plough" in the old world and in the Mexican countryside 
as well... to find it, use the distal two stars of the asterism's 
hangle and make an imaginary equilateral triangle on the side of the 
north star.  That's where you'll find the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) being 
whited out by a single star amongst its millions and millions...

SN 2011fe, ugggg. what a name, let's just call it Joe; Supernova Joe 
will respectfully max out around Sept. 11 or 12 and be burning oodles 
more than any other star in the visible universe!

Don't miss Joe blow!  Put on a Jimmy Buffet song ('Volcano') and watch 
the proto-meteorites being formed. that will make scientist of future 
eras develop their own classification and fingerprinting systems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Supernova_in_M101_2011-08-25.jpg

Kindest wishes
Doug