The following appeared in the June, 1993 Central Arkansas Astronomical Society Observer

The Easter Star

By John W.  Reed

With the coming of Supernova 1993J I feel the need to pause and think on this event and what it means to us as amateurs.  The nova is now fading from its initial brightness, but is still visible in even a modest telescope.  Yet this star is some 5 million light-years away in a galaxy that is a faint smudge of light even in a larger instrument.  Like a moth in a flame the star prematurely ended its life in a flash of fire.  The only difference is this blaze is larger than millions of its fellows put together!  What is even more amazing is the fact we as amateurs are here to observe it.  However, the icing on the cake is knowing that it is not just a tiny speck of light in our telescopes, but rather the huge cataclysm.  This comprehension is due to the understanding the observer brings to the telescope and not the telescope itself or what is viewed in it.

When Dean Williams gave his talk that evening prior to Easter Sunday, he informed us of the facts and figures in a complete and thorough way that left everyone with a better understanding of what was happening.  However what occurred to myself and, I suspect several others, was not the numbers and data, but the shear magnitude of what we were really seeing.  Very few of the earth's total population have actually seen an atomic blast (thank goodness).  Yet this stellar explosion is so many orders of magnitude bigger that the proper metaphor eludes me.  Perhaps it is like a match sputtering to life compared to a 1000 tons of TNT?  I don't know if even that's enough!  The numbers are beyond my feeble mind.

 Then, after Dean's talk, we wandered outside, stumbling in the dark until our eyes became adapted to the night.  Telescopes were scattered across the observing area, all pointed toward the northeast, toward the galaxy M-81, toward that one star.  As I waited in line to observe through Chris Lasley's 13" I realized that we were all being bathed in nova light This is a light far too faint to cast a shadow, yet it was surely everywhere washing over us, the country side, the world, the solar system and beyond.  That small star was so bright that its light was still fanning out through the universe even after five million years!  Five million light-years of immeasurable space had not diluted it completely.

Eventually I had my chance to look through Chris' dobsonian.  It was really an unremarkable mote of luminance.  A mere gleam of brightness embedded inside the wisps of M-8 1.  I studied this small star and goose bumps danced upon my arms.  I shivered as if cold, and yet the evening was rather warm.

As we packed up from our little star party I recalled that short story by Author C.  Clarke The Star where a priest travels in some far future expedition to the site of an ancient supernova.  When the expedition arrives it finds a lone planet in the far reaches of the star's solar system which was not boiled away in the explosion.  On that star is a vault of information placed there by a now extinct civilization.  From this knowledge the expedition learns that the ancient society was a grand and wonderful one with many great accomplishments, all wiped out in one fantastic cataclysm.

The expedition also learns one other piece of information while near the star: the exact time in the past that it exploded.  Thus the Star of Bethlehem was at last explained!

I hope there were no life bearing worlds circling 1993J 5 million years ago.  There probably were not even planets.  However we may never know as now the star's brilliance fades into the eternal night.  I feel that it will take a much longer time for the event to fade from our minds.