Has a supernova ever been recorded?

[gib65]

Has a supernova ever been recorded? I mean with a telescope? I'm used to seeing images from Hubble or JWST but I've never seen videos. Are these telescopes capable of generating videos?

If they're not, would it be possible to connect an earth-bound telescope to a video generating device and record what it sees? If so, could it be directed to a star expected to go supernova very soon and just record until it happens? What would it look like?

[swansont]

I doubt it. A “live” video wouldn’t show much. Research telescopes often take long exposures to gather more light, and it takes a while for a supernova to spread out any appreciable amount.

You could get a video from stitching together images from different days, which would show changes in brightness.

AFAIK there’s no way to tell when it will happen with any reasonable precision.

 

edit (emphasis added)

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/hubble-watches-exploding-star-fade-into-oblivion

“In the time-lapse sequence, spanning nearly a year, the supernova first appears as a blazing star located on the galaxy's outer edge. It initially outshines the brightest stars in the galaxy before fading out of sight.”

[Ken Fabian]

Apparently, yes. From livescience.com -

-

Quote

Scientists began watching the doomed star — a red supergiant named SN 2020tlf and located about 120 million light-years from Earth — more than 100 days before its final, violent collapse, according to a new study published Jan. 6 in the Astrophysical Journal (opens in new tab). During that lead-up, the researchers saw the star erupt with bright flashes of light as great globs of gas exploded out of the star's surface.

 

[gib65]

20 hours ago, swansont said:

edit (emphasis added)

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/hubble-watches-exploding-star-fade-into-oblivion

“In the time-lapse sequence, spanning nearly a year, the supernova first appears as a blazing star located on the galaxy's outer edge. It initially outshines the brightest stars in the galaxy before fading out of sight.”

Wow, that's interesting.

"Hubble didn't record the initial blast in January 2018, but for nearly one year took consecutive photos, from 2018 to 2019, that have been assembled into a time-lapse sequence."

So the video in that link is actually a time-lapse of a process that in reality took about a year. So if we were looking at it through a telescope "live" we wouldn't really see any animation.

13 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

Apparently, yes. From livescience.com -

I'm surprised they didn't post the video.

[swansont]

14 hours ago, Ken Fabian said:

Apparently, yes. From livescience.com -

-

The fact that they observed it for four months beforehand indicates that they didn’t know when it was going to go supernova.

And this was an unusual situation 

These pre-supernova pyrotechnics came as a big surprise, as previous observations of red supergiants about to blow their tops showed no traces of violent emissions, the researchers said.

[Sensei]

The Earth rotates around an axis.. any attempt to make "direct video" means you will get blurry video with stars looking like this:

 

To prevent this, when the object you want to record is in close range (i.e. in parsecs), the "recording device" must rotate/move accordingly with the Earth's rotation.

 

The farther away you want to record an object, the longer you have to collect photons from it.

[Ken Fabian]

On 2/26/2023 at 9:35 AM, Sensei said:

The Earth rotates around an axis.. any attempt to make "direct video" means you will get blurry video with stars looking like this:

 

To prevent this, when the object you want to record is in close range (i.e. in parsecs), the "recording device" must rotate/move accordingly with the Earth's rotation.

 

The farther away you want to record an object, the longer you have to collect photons from it.

Well, more than one observatory is needed to maintain continuous observation unless the observatory is space. It is a well known consideration. I don't know that photographic films are used any more; likely the observations themselves are continuous and the data can be combined digitally to get the best results, with arbitrary start and end points.

Observing with multiple kinds of observatories and devices across as much of the emr spectrum as possible seems in order too; I'd expect an imminent supernova to be of wide interest. Someone with more specific interest in astronomy might give more informative answers.