As part of the citizen astronomy project, ‘Kilonova Seekers’, University of Warwick astronomers and public volunteers have made their first major discovery - an exploding star system found in real time - a discovery that would not have been possible without the diligent work of the public.
As part of the citizen astronomy project, ‘Kilonova Seekers’, University of Warwick astronomers and public volunteers have made their first major discovery - an exploding star system found in real time - a discovery that would not have been possible without the diligent work of the public.
Previously described as playing astronomical ‘spot the difference,’ Kilonova Seekers asks the public to compare the latest images of a section of night sky to an image of the same section of space taken on previous nights. Their goal – to spot new stars or significant changes in light intensity that may indicate that something remarkable has happened in space.
Published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics, the project has announced its first published major discovery – an extremely bright exploding star spotted as it happened.
The star was spotted when it brightened in the night sky by 2,500 times compared to when that spot in the sky was imaged a few days earlier. The quick response and hard work of the public allowed the object to be studied and classified early in its evolution, identifying it as a cataclysmic variable star, and given the name GOTO0650.
Read more at University of Warwick
Image: Full GOTO-North node under the skies of La Palma (Credit: K. Ulaczyk (2024))
