Astronomers Await a Nova article

[bobbyr54]

I clicked on the question to post my view on this article. It mentioned a star call T Pyxidius, and that with a companion star goes to nova every so many years. The article also said it was very dim with a magnitude of 14, but brigthens to about 6.2, before fading back to normal. What I want to know is, that when they talk about such events? Why don't ever talk about how many light years away from us these stars are? Like this article stated that the last time this star T Pyxidis last went nova was over 40 years ago. Don't they mean that it went nova more than 40,000 years ago or however far away T Pyxidis actually is?

 

[qso1]

Welcome to SDC and good question BTW.<br /><br />I've seen that happen on occasion as well. The article fails to point out how far off such objects are. As far as the 40 years ago thing...it would have been accurate to point out we saw the light from the event 40 years ago but it actually happened as far back as whatever the distance to this star is or in this case, 6,040 years ago.<br /><br />The star is 6,000 ly distant and theres a good link to it which I listed below.<br /><br />http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970925.html <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened.</em></p> </div>