The Gaia satellite, whose mission scientists and engineers Cosmos Institute of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) involved Sciences, has discovered her first supernova, located 500 million light years from Earth. As reported today by the University of Barcelona (UB), has designed an application for mobile phones to track the progress of the space mission Gaia satellite, successfully launched on December 19, 2013, the discovery has been made from comments on a celestial body on 30 August.
The spectrophotometric satellite observations have confirmed that it is the explosion of a Type Ia supernova 500 million light years away. According to the UB, the observation of a sudden increase in the brightness of this celestial body about the comment made a month earlier triggered the alert system. “We thought it was a supernova but we needed to have more clues to confirm this finding,” said in a statement Lukasz Wyrzykowski, expert Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw (Poland).
confirm the nature of the supernova, astronomers complemented Gaia satellite data with other observations of the Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) in Liverpool, and the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma. “This is the first supernova of what we hope will be a series of major discoveries of the Gaia mission,” remarked Timo Prusti researcher this landmark project that has put Europe at the forefront of research in astrometry.
The Gaia space mission wants to know the history of the Milky Way, from its origins to now, measuring the positions, distances and motions of a billion stars and studying their physical properties, such as age and chemical composition. As explained Carme Jordi, Professor, Department of Astronomy and Meteorology of the UB, “with Gaia, we are able to uncover the history of the Milky Way and presented many interesting facts about the lives of stars and exoplanets.”
The mobile application (app) called Gaia Mission, created by the UB can follow the progress of Gaia, a satellite that will collect data for 5 years a billion stars for constructing the 3D map of the Milky Way more accurate than has been done so far. The Gaia Mission -available app for free in iTunes-allows us to know the progress of the project through astrophysicist iPhone, iPad or iPod puts the mayor and public images, videos and interactive diagrams with lots of detailed satellite.
The UB engineer Marcial Clotet, who promoted the idea of the app, explained that “there are different levels within the application so that users can move through the levels to find the information with the degree of detail you wish according to their interest. “
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