A Stellar Explosion Mimicked the End of the Death Star - by ScottyJ_PhD
The explosion is AT2018cow, nicknamed ‘The Cow’ because of the letters in its procedurally generated designation. The Cow is a Fast Blue Optical Transient , a rare class of explosion of which only five have ever been seen. FBOTs tend to be in the blue end of the spectra range, and they happen quickly on astronomical time scales: The Cow exhausted most of its energy in 16 days. But FBOTs are also incredibly bright – brighter than most supernovas.
Polarization is the property of light waves that describes the orientation of the waves. Sunglasses use this principle to filter out sunlight by blocking waves in one orientation while allowing waves in other orientations to pass through. Artist Rendering of AT2018cow, showing a flat disc-shaped explosion. Image credit: Philip Drury, University of Sheffield.What causes FBOTs like The Cow? It’s going to take more work to find out for sure. New sky survey instruments like the Vera Rubin Observatory will be able to capture a bigger sample size of FBOTs and make the task of characterizing them easier.
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