Aim High - reach for the stars

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Aim for the stars and if you fall, you will fall on the moon! That is my youngest daughters mantra at the moment. Aiming High but certain to put a safety net in place. Smart girl! In the news of last week - the place where we visited in Sutherland a month ago, has made HEADLINES in its new discovery: "About 3.8 billion light years away, a star has exploded with a brightness of 570 billion times that of our own sun. If that fails to impress you, consider that this is almost 20 times the output of the 100 billion stars that comprise our Milky Way galaxy. This supernova, which is being regarded as one of the most powerful explosions in human history, was unveiled through a collaboration of several telescopes. However, a major contribution came from the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) in Sutherland, a small Karoo town in the Northern Cape." I love the way this article starts out: Kaboom indeed: "Kaboom! Astronomers have found the most violently explosive supernova so far detected in the history of the universe. Supernovae are already some of the brightest events out there but in recent decades astronomers have seen a rare new class of blasts, superluminous supernovae (SLSNe)—sometimes dubbed hypernovae. The new discovery was spotted last June by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN), a system of eight small 14-centimeter telescopes at two sites in Chile and Hawaii that can scan the entire sky every 2 to 3 days." I Love it when South Africa is part of new discoveries - everyone thinks we are just a bunch of wild people walking with the wild animals . . .NOT! Have a great Monday - what are your plans for the week?