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By Maggie Nufer | May 15th 2008 03:56 PM | Print | E-mail | Track Comments

Sorry, bad pun. But this is a pretty cool finding - on May 14 scientists announced that they had just found the youngest supernova known.


Astronomers at the Chandra X-ray Observatory (which is part of NASA) said that the last known supernova in our galaxy occurred around 1680 - that was called Cassiopeia A.


Astronomers regularly observe supernovae in other galaxies like ours. Based on those observations, researchers estimate about three explode every century in the Milky Way.

This supernova - called by the oh-so-descriptive name of G1.9+0.3 - is 25,000 light years away from us. It should have become visible to us on Earth about 140 years ago, but we didn't have the great instruments that we do now to observe things so far away.


Here's a beautiful picture of the supernova from Chandra.

supernova


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