Wait. HOW MANY supernova explode every year?

Summary

Blog Jam[Of course I picked this one to highlight because the title made me laugh. From Tuesday’s article. Credit: S. Safi-Harb et al (2022)]Astro TidbitA brief synopsis of some interesting astronomy/science news I also mentioned it had a supernova in it, called SN2021 afdx. And I have to say, when I first saw that designation I actually muttered an obscenity or two under my breath. Why? Because it’s all in the name. Way back when, supernovae — exploding stars — were named after the year they were seen, or maybe given the name of the astronomer who described them. That’s how we get Tycho’s Supernova, and Kepler’s Supernova, which are also called SN 1572 and SN 1604 since that was the year they were seen. That was fine when naked eye supernovae occurred once a century or so. But then we did something irritating: We invented telescopes. To compound that we also invented photography, allowing long exposures to reveal fainter objects. And suddenly instead of once a century astronomers were seeing several supernovae per year, occurring in distant galaxies to faint to have been seen earlier! Rings of gas around the exploded star Supernova 1987A, which is the blob in the middle of the central ring. I studied that bright inner ring for my degree. Credit: Jason Pun (NOAO) and SINS Collaboration Anyway, the second supernova seen in 1987 was 1987B, and the third 1987C, and so on. If, in a given year, more than 26 supernovae are seen, then the 27th is given the year plus the letters aa (yes, A-Z are capital letters but then the ones after are lower case, because astronomers are nothing if not maddening even when trying to codify naming conventions logically), the 28th would be ab, etc. The 52nd supernova of that year would be az, and so the 53rd would be called ba. If, at some unlikely point in the future, the naming convention people reasoned, we actually found 26 + 26 x 26 = 702 (26 for the single letters, then 26 x 26 for all the doubles) supernovae in a single year (like th...