In a galaxy far, far away, a massive star suffered a nasty double whammy. On Oct. 20, 2004, Japanese amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki saw the star let loose an outburst so bright that it was initially mistaken for a supernova. The star survived, but for only two years. On Oct. 11, 2006, professional and amateur astronomers witnessed the star actually blowing itself to smithereens as Supernova 2006jc.
"We have never observed a stellar outburst and then later seen the star explode," says University of California at Berkeley astronomer Ryan Foley. His group studied the event with ground-based telescopes, including the 10-meter (32.8-foot) Keck telescope in Hawaii. Narrow helium spectral lines showed that the supernova?s blast wave ran into a slow-moving shell of material, presumably the progenitor?s upper layers ejected just two years earlier. If the spectral lines had been caused by the supernova?s fast-moving blast wave, the lines would have been much broader.
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