Strange Quarks

At the February 2012 ASSA General meeting, Kevin Davey spoke about Type Ia supernovae as standard candles. The recent Type Ia supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy was mentioned during Q&A.

The figure below shows a light curve of the supernova (whose designation is now PTF11kly):

Light curve of SN in M101 (PTF11kly)

The plot shows observations from the AAVSO International Database in multiple wavelengths (visual, various photometric and infrared bands) from August 24 2011 through to Feburary 2 2012.

This shows the characteristic light curve of a Type Ia supernova.

This entry was posted on February 3, 2012 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Astronomy, VStar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.