itars you can see from a single locationrises to about 50,000, and leaps to 300,000. iteen-incelescope, suco count not in stars but in galaxies. From ensof billions of stars. table numbers, but even o take in,supernovae are extremely rare. A star can burn for billions of years, but it dies just once andquickly, and only a fears explode. Most expire quietly, like a campfire at daypical galaxy, consisting of a ars, a supernova tle bit like standingon tion platform of tate Building elescope and searctan in t us say, someone ligy-first-birthday cake.
So er got in touco ask if ts for ing supernovae, tronomical community t of his mind.
At time Evans en-incelescope—a very respectable size for amateur stargazingbut of to do serious cosmology—and ofind one of tronomical ory before Evansstarted looking in 1980, fey supernovae time I visited of 2001, recorded y-fourty-fifter and a ty-sixtain advantages. Most observers, like most people generally, are int of sky largely to first. elescopes are cumbersome tional time is consumed o position. Evans could sle sixteen-incelescope around like a tail gunner in a dogfigicular point in telescope o do fifty or sixty.
Looking for supernovae is mostly a matter of not finding to 1996 a s of peering andpeering. Once een days, but anotime tfinding any at all.
“tually a certain value in not finding anyt s to te at heabsence of evidenceis evidence.”
On a table beside telescope acks of pos and papers relevant to s,and ronomicalpublications, and at some time you must tos of distant nebulae and t clouds of celestial lig delicate and moving splendor. Evans’s . t blurry black-and-tle points of ness. One ed a sars rifling flare t I o put close to my face to see.
told me, ar in a constellation called Fornax from a galaxy knooastronomy as NGC1365. (NGC stands for Nealogue, o say, it’sa database.) For sixty million silent years, t from tar’s spectacular demise traveledunceasingly til one nig of 2001 it