ANU invites everyone to join the search for exploding stars

Using exploding stars as markers all across the Universe, we can measure how the Universe is growing and what it's doing. ANU is inviting everyone with an interest in astronomy to join a search that the University is leading for exploding stars called supernovae. Astrophysicists use supernovae, which are explosions as bright as 100 million billion billion billion lightning bolts, as light sources to measure the Universe and acceleration of its growth. Co-lead researcher ANU astrophysicist Dr Brad Tucker said scientists can measure the distance of a supernova from Earth by calculating how much the light from the exploding star fades. "Using exploding stars as markers all across the Universe, we can measure how the Universe is growing and what it's doing," said Dr Tucker from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. "We can then use that information to better understand dark energy, the cause of the Universe's acceleration." The ANU project will allow citizen scientists to use a web portal on Zooniverse.org to search images taken by the SkyMapper telescope at the ANU Siding Spring Observatory for the SkyMapper Transient Survey. Dr Tucker said finding supernovae involved citizen volunteers scanning the SkyMapper images online to look for differences and marking up those differences for the researchers to follow up.