Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2015

5 MAY-JUNE 2015 STELLAR EVOLUTION O n the evening of 20 June 1670, in Dijon, France, the attention of Dom Voituret Anthelme, an astronomer and Carthusian monk, is captured by a new 3 rd magnitude star appeared out of no- where immediately above the head of Cyg- nus (hence, near Albireo), just within the confines of the current constellation of Vul- pecula, outlined right at that time by the great celestial cartographer Johannes Heve- lius. About a month after Anthelme, while making observations from Gda ń sk, also He- velius noted the new star and recorded it in T he 12-metre diameter APEX telescope for sub-millime- tre waves (Ata- cama Pathfinder Experiment), on the Chajnantor plateau, Chile, used by a team of researchers to investigate the remnant of Nova Vul 1670. [ESO] his charts. The event was clearly remark- able, despite the fact that in the previous seventy years there had already been two similar stellar spectacles, one at short angu- lar distance, known as Nova Cygni 1600 (3 rd mag), and the other in the constellation Ophiuchus, the Supernova 1604 (mag -2.5). Both Anthelme and Hevelius were able to admire this new star of 1670 until the month of October, when the decline in its brightness took it below the threshold of visibility to the naked eye and to the rudi- mentary telescopes of that time. Surpris-