A team of UC Berkeley astronomers were among the first in the world to see the death of a star turn into a supernova in what they called "the holy grail of supernova research."

According to UC Berkeley astronomy Professor Alex Filippenko, supernovas occur only once or twice per century per galaxy, making the capture of one "a lucky break."

The initial X-ray burst of the Type 1b supernova on Jan. 9 was originally captured by NASA's Swift satellite. The satellite was set on another supernova that occurred just a few weeks prior in the same galaxy, prompting NASA to send out a world-wide e-mail to astronomers, said Maryam Modjaz, a Miller postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley who helped author the first report on the supernova.

"In science you sometimes have these serendipitous discoveries and so what has happened in this case was that the satellite was already observing another supernova in the same galaxy that had exploded just a couple of weeks earlier," Modjaz said. "(UC Berkeley astronomers) also observed this ... so when this new one exploded we didn't expect it at all, there was no sign or anything."

Soon after receiving the e-mail, Modjaz said she started organizing astronomers around the world and throughout the United States, though the supernova is mostly visible in the Northern Hemisphere, to point their telescopes towards the new supernova before nightfall so they could start collecting data after the sun set.

"Time is really critical and I knew that a lot of other astronomers around the world would be doing the same thing, so I tried to mobilize people quickly and to also make them send me the data or analyze the data quickly so we know what it is," she said.

Modjaz and her collaborators at UC Berkeley, Harvard University, where she received her doctorate in astrophysics, and elsewhere followed the supernova intensively for three months to monitor changes before making their report, though the collaborators are still currently observing it.

According to Modjaz, the supernova is a Type 1B supernova, one that has helium, but not hydrogen.

"We were the first ones in the whole world to announce that it had lines of a specific element, namely Helium," Modjaz said. "First it looked like a different kind of supernova, but then, like a week later, we got more and more data … so we sent out another circular, another e-mail, to the rest of the world saying 'look, this is a supernova with helium.'"

Filippenko said the data obtained from studying the supernova in the NGC2770 galaxy, a large galaxy 19 million light years away from Earth, helped confirm work by astro-theorists and could help with future research.

"(Astro-theorists) had predicted this kind of what's called 'break-out' for like the past 30 years, so they had predicted this, but it had never been observed like in this very close, very clean fashion," Modjaz said. "This was the first time we were actually were able to see it and of course it's a little bit different than people had predicted it to be, but the general idea is the same … people have been waiting for 30 years to have it verified."

Modjaz, who graduated from UC Berkeley in 2000 with a bachelor's degree in astrophysics, said she first became interested in the field after attending a fireside chat in the residence halls with Filippenko during her freshmen year.

"They're really exciting because on one hand they're really violent and they're really sad dramatic occasions because the star dies, it explodes, but on the other hand they tell us a lot about the universe and also it's the moment of creation for a lot of the elements that make up our body like the iron in our blood," she said. "So it's a really beautiful metaphor too."

Tags: SUPERNOVA, ALEX FILIPENKO, MARYAM OMDJAZ, JOSHUA BLOOM