SN 1994D was a

Type Ia supernova A Type Ia supernova (read: "type one-A") is a type of supernova that occurs in binary systems (two stars orbiting one another) in which one of the stars is a white dwarf. The other star can be anything from a giant star to an even smaller white ...

event in the outskirts of galaxy NGC 4526. It was offset by west and south of the galaxy center and positioned near a prominent dust lane. It was caused by the explosion of a

white dwarf A white dwarf is a Compact star, stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very density, dense: in an Earth sized volume, it packs a mass that is comparable to the Sun. No nuclear fusion takes place i ...

star composed of carbon and oxygen. This event was discovered on March 7, 1994 by R. R. Treffers and associates using the automated 30-inch telescope at

Leuschner Observatory Leuschner Observatory, originally called the Students' Observatory, is an observatory jointly operated by the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco State University. The observatory was built in 1886 on the Berkeley campus. For many ...

. It reached peak visual brightness,

magnitude Magnitude may refer to: Mathematics *Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction *Magnitude (mathematics), the relative size of an object *Norm (mathematics), a term for the size or length of a vector *Order of ...

11.9, two weeks later on March 22. Modelling of the

light curve In astronomy, a light curve is a graph (discrete mathematics), graph of the Radiance, light intensity of a celestial object or region as a function of time, typically with the magnitude (astronomy), magnitude of light received on the ''y''-axis ...

indicates the explosion would have been visible around March 3-4. A possible detection of helium in the spectrum was made by W. P. S. Meikle and associates in 1996. A mass of 0.014 to in helium would be needed to produce this feature.

References

External links

Light curves and spectra
on th
Open Supernova Catalog
Supernovae 19940307 Virgo (constellation) {{var-star-stub 1994 in outer space

See also

References

Further reading

External links