RE: Science Porn
November 27, 2014 at 3:36 pm
(This post was last modified: November 27, 2014 at 3:43 pm by Anomalocaris.)
I know. SN1885A occurred very close to the core of andromeda, so it would have been set against a relatively bright and dense background of stars. So it was not positioned to be the most conspicuous to the naked eye. It was also probably partially obscured by dust lanes of andromeda. Even so it reach visual magnitude 5.5, which means it was brighter than naked eye threshold for some days, even if no one recorded seeing it by naked eye at the time. If it had happened today, I am sure some naked eye observers in high altitude locations would have seen it.
Also, SN1885A was a type IA Supernova, This means while its intrinsic optical brightness was high compared to the average over all types of Supernove, it was still 4-5 magnitudes dimmer than, or only as little as 1% as bright intrinsically as, the brightest hypernovea on record. This means if all other conditions are identical, a really bright supernova like type IIN would appear as bright as SN1885A From up to 10 times further away.
I think modern theory say these hypernovea are order of magnitude brighter along their spin axis than their average all aspect brightness. So if one of them is correctly aligned, it could be seen 3-4 times even further than that. Hence the maximum theoretical distance at which a hypernovea can be seen by naked eye would be around 100 million light years.
Also, SN1885A was a type IA Supernova, This means while its intrinsic optical brightness was high compared to the average over all types of Supernove, it was still 4-5 magnitudes dimmer than, or only as little as 1% as bright intrinsically as, the brightest hypernovea on record. This means if all other conditions are identical, a really bright supernova like type IIN would appear as bright as SN1885A From up to 10 times further away.
I think modern theory say these hypernovea are order of magnitude brighter along their spin axis than their average all aspect brightness. So if one of them is correctly aligned, it could be seen 3-4 times even further than that. Hence the maximum theoretical distance at which a hypernovea can be seen by naked eye would be around 100 million light years.