Koichi Itakagi is the CEO of a food company in Japan, but he spends his free time looking up at the sky. He is one of the most experienced and well-known amateur astronomers in the world. Itakagi is a “supernova hunter” since he focuses his attention on the detection of this violent, spectacular and crucial for the evolution of the Universe cosmic phenomenon.
He has discovered 170 supernovae so far, and when he decided on May 19 to take his equipment up Mount Yagamata he was obviously hoping something interesting would turn up, but in no way did he expect to see his name first make the rounds in the scientific community and in the continuation of publicity.
Itakagi spotted a glow in the galaxy M101, located about 21 million light-years from Earth, which he thought probably came from a supernova.
He informed the International Astronomical Union who sent the signal to the astronomical community who not only certified that it was a supernova but that it is the brightest detected in recent years and observing it from now on may reveal important facts that will allow experts to make accurate predictions about eruptions that may occur in the future.
The last moments
With its publication (“From Discovery to the First Month of the Type II Supernova 2023ixf: High and Variable Mass Loss in the Final Year before Explosion“), in the magazine “The Astrophysical Journal Letters”, a research team led by scientists from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the USA presents the results of the study it did on this supernova which received the code name SN 2023ixf. The most interesting finding is that the star in the last stage of its life, just a few months before it self-destructed in the supernova explosion had suffered a mass loss equal to the mass of the Sun.
The discovery sheds light on what happens to giant stars as they die. The processes that take place in these stars just before the end of their lives remain largely unknown to scientists. It is clear that SN 2023ixf will be a favorite target of astronomers in the near future looking for new evidence of this type of stars and their explosions.
