Once again there’ll be something special in the night sky tonight – a star is going to explode millions of light years away from us. No that isn’t a picture of it to the right – that’s a picture I took by mistake when I dropped my camera in the grass. I like it though, it’s a nice image.
Anyway, astronomers have predicted that we will be able to glimpse the brightest supernova since 1954, and as long as the sky is clear it’ll be visible all over the country. Just look to the bottom of the ‘handle’ of the plough as it gets dark and there it will be… KABOOM!
Of course as I write this the sky is black and it’s pouring with rain. Typical, I’d like to have seen that.
It’ll still be there though above the clouds, although it won’t really. That star exploded a long, long time ago. We are seeing the star as it was. It isn’t there any more - all we are seeing is the light from the star which has taken all this time to reach us.
Can you imagine that - a star exploding?
I wonder if there were planets orbiting that star, I wonder if any of those planets were inhabited, and I wonder if the creatures on that planet were intelligent enough to know that it was coming or if it was a complete shock.
A world or two annihilated in a couple of seconds.
Maybe I don’t want to see it after all.
Emma Cholmondeley commented on Facebook:
ReplyDeleteMmmmmm...who knows as it happened so many years ago..but here's my theory - perhaps the planets orbiting were aware it might happen but were small and powerless? Maybe if the planets were older and wiser they would have had the power to hold the star and therefore their universe together and so prevent their worlds from being sadly destroyed??