Space is a terrifying place. The Hubble Space Telescope spotted a good example of this more than five years ago when two neutron stars collided together creating an explosion so big that its resulting jet stream traveled more than 99.97 percent the speed of light.
The explosion, dubbed GW170817, was initially observed in August 2017. However, NASA astronomers have only recently been able to get a full look at what occurred and published a paper of their findings on October 12 in the journal Nature. The study’s authors found that the resulting blast was the equivalent of a supernova exploding.
In a press release, NASA heralded the findings as a “major watershed” in the study of these intergalactic collisions. The findings were also notable because they combined the forces of 70 observatories across the world such as the very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) radio telescopes as well as those in orbit like Hubble.
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“The incredible precision, gleaned from Hubble and radio telescopes, needed to measure the blob's trajectory, was equivalent to measuring the diameter of a 12-inch-diameter pizza placed on the moon as seen from Earth,” NASA said in the press release.
Interestingly, there was a bit of an optical illusion that occurred when astronomers looked at the data. Measurements from Hubble suggested that the jet produced by the explosion was actually traveling seven times the speed of light—which is impossible.
What was actually happening was the jet was pointed at Earth and traveling towards our planet. This gave the illusion that it was traveling faster than it actually was.
"I'm amazed that Hubble could give us such a precise measurement, which rivals the precision achieved by powerful radio VLBI telescopes spread across the globe," Kunal P. Mooley, an astrophysicist at Caltech and lead author of the paper, said in the release.
The findings are yet another great example of how the world’s array of telescopes and satellites can work together and collaborate. It’s not unlike how new photos and findings from the James Webb Space Telescope are being enhanced by other orbital observatories like Hubble or the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
Now if only we humans could learn to do the same…
