Alicia Soderberg (CfA) gave the astro seminar today, on a supernova she discovered by a soft x-ray flash apparently immediately at shock break-out, in other words at the beginning of the explosion, long before the optical came to maximum light. This permitted the study of the supernova from beginning to end. Unfortunately, her discovery involved an incredible amount of luck and we will have to wait for the next generation of x-ray experiments to discover these routinely. In answer to an off-topic question from me, she said that to her knowledge, there is no pre-cursor activity that precedes break-out. I asked because this would be an interesting effect to look for in historical data sets.
In the evening I finished writing up my short document that describes my classification of standard data-analysis algorithms.
Wasn't Lucky Supernova a character from the film "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension"?
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