WHAT LIT UP THE SKY IN 1054?
MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE
In 1054 CE, Chinese astronomers looked towards the sky and discovered a star which had suddenly appeared in a position 6,500 light years away where no star had previously been observed. They watched as it shone six times more brightly than Venus in the constellation of Taurus for 23 days from 4 July, and their observations were backed by astronomers in Japan and the Arab world.
Reported as a ‘guest star’ by the chief of the astronomical bureau at K’ai-feng, it remained visible until 17 April 1056. It would then be another 872 years before Edwin Hubble became the first to associate the observation with another discovery – that of the Crab Nebula, which was spotted in 1731 by English astronomer John Bevis.
Hubble suggested that what the Chinese astronomers had seen was a supernova explosion that had caused stellar remains to be scattered across an area of space some six light years wide. It was a controversial theory, primarily because the study of supernovae was still in its infancy. But in 1939, American observational astronomer Nicholas Mayall demonstrated beyond doubt that the
