Astronomers Spot Most Distant Supernova Found Yet
Posted on January 10, 2013
Astronomers have discovered the most distant supernova found so far. The supernova with a redshift of 1.71 dates back 10 billion years in time. It has been labeled SN SCP-0401 and named Mingus after jazz musician Charles Mingus.
David Rubin of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) presented the discovery at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting.
Rubin said in a statement, "This is the most distant supernova anyone has ever found for doing dependable cosmology. The most important unanswered question we have about the nature of dark energy is whether it varies over time - whether it affects the expansion of the universe differently in different eras. With SN SCP-0401, we have the first example of a well-measured supernova sufficiently far away to study the expansion history of the universe from almost 10 billion years ago."
The Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP) analysis of the new supernova will appear in the January 20, 2013 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. The analysis is also published online here.