Justin Abbott

Elementary Astronomy
E-Portfolio Assignment
The Astronomy topic that I chose was an article entitled Hubble
captures first-ever predicted exploding star from Astronomy.com. I
was intrigued by this article because the topic followed the course
material that we have been talking about in class recently.
In Early December 2015 astronomers were able to witness a
supernova exploding when and where they predicted in November of
2014. They were able to accurately predict the place and time of the
explosion because of the Einstein Cross that they noticed in 2014. The
Einstein cross is an optical illusion which is due to the mass of a single
galaxy within the cluster warping and magnifying the light from the
distant stellar explosion in gravitational lensing (astronomy.com).
Astronomers noticed that while looking at the Supernova they realized
that the galaxy it was in was already known to be a galaxy that they
can see within 3 other images caused by the warping mass of the
cluster.
While watching the galaxy the astronomers noticed that both the
dark and visible matter was unevenly distributed, meaning that the
light takes different paths at different lengths and are visible at
different times. Using other clusters currently being lensed and
combining them with the discovery of the Einstein cross astronomers
were able to make their predictions of when and where the supernova
was going to explode. The observations and the predictions showed
that the supernova exploded 10 Billion years ago, and that the
supernova has been witnessed before, in 1998, in an image of the
supernovas host galaxy.
Since October of 2015 astronomers have been randomly and
periodically watching the host galaxy of the supernova hoping for their
predictions to be correct. They were proven right when on December
11, 2015 the supernova showed its colors. The supernova has been
nicknamed Refsdal.
The ability for astronomers to be able to find clues pointing
towards an astronomical event such as the explosion of the Supernova,
and be able to accurately predict the time and place shows just how
much technology has improved and is able to be utilized to witness
such a rare event.