Will We Witness a Daytime Visible Supernova in the Near Future?

  • Level: High School 
  • Thread starter Thread starter Sobi
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Flux
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Start your own thread to ask a follow-up.
6 replies · 2K views
Sobi
Messages
19
Reaction score
0
I have heard that some centuries ago a supernova happened which its light was visible in daytime.according to the observations will have a such supernova in the next few years?
 
Astronomy news on Phys.org
Sobi said:
I have heard that some centuries ago a supernova happened which its light was visible in daytime.according to the observations will have a such supernova in the next few years?
Who knows? There is no was to tell. Could happen tomorrow, could be in a billion years (although likely sooner than that). Since there have been several during recorded history it's likely to happen in an amount of time that is long by human standards (possibly hundreds of years) but very near zero in cosmological time scales.
 
The last daytime one was the 1054AD one that produced the crab nebula
it was particularly noted by Chinese astronomers of the day ( prob many many others around the world)

yeah it could happen again any old time who knows when?
 
Looking at typical galaxies, supernovas in one galaxy occur about somewhere between one every 5 years to one every 100 years.
A lot of them will not be visible to us though if there is dust in the line of sight, which often is the case for our own galaxy.
 
Last edited:
There is no way that there is a supernova every 5 years on average in our galaxy, or even typical galaxies. We have been monitoring about 1/6 of our galaxy visually since 1605 and seen zero. We have been monitoring M31 and M33 on a similar timescale, and since one in M31 - in 1885 - and zero in M33. We have been monitoring the entire galaxy in neutrinos for 30 years and have seen zero core-collapse supernovae. It is difficult to support a rate of once per 50 years: once per 5 is unsupportable.