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Astronomers are watching the astronomical equivalent of the instant replay of a spectacular outburst from Eta Carinae, a massive double-star system.
Dubbed the “Great Eruption,” the outburst lasted from 1837 to 1858 and temporarily made Eta Carinae the second brightest star in the sky. But luckily for today’s astronomers, some of the light from the eruption took an indirect path to Earth and is just arriving now.
Federica Bianco, a postdoctoral researcher at University of California, Santa Barbara and Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), used LCOGT’s Faulkes Telescope South in Siding Spring, Australia, to record the explosion after this time delay and compare it to eyewitness reports of the brightness of the star from the 1800′s to determine that the light echo was indeed from the “Great Eruption.”
Full story at Futurity.
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Photo credit: Jon Morse (University of Colorado), and NASA
