Timeline of neutron stars, pulsars, supernovae,
and white dwarfs
Note that this list is mainly about the development
of knowledge, but also about some supernovae
taking place.
For a separate list of the latter, see the
article List of supernovae.
All dates refer to when the supernova was
observed on Earth or would have been observed
on Earth had powerful enough telescopes existed
at the time.
== Timeline ==
185 – Chinese astronomers become the first
to record observations of a supernova, SN
185,
1006 – Ali ibn Ridwan and Chinese astronomers
observe the brightest (magnitude −7.5) recorded
supernova, SN 1006, which is observed in the
constellation of Lupus,
1054 – Chinese, American Indian and Arab
astronomers observe the SN 1054, the Crab
Nebula supernova explosion,
1181 – Chinese astronomers observe the SN
1181 supernova,
1572 – Tycho Brahe discovers a supernova
(SN 1572) in the constellation Cassiopeia,
1604 – Johannes Kepler's supernova, SN 1604,
in Serpens is observed,
1862 – Alvan Graham Clark observes Sirius
B,
1866 – William Huggins studies the spectrum
of a nova and discovers that it is surrounded
by a cloud of hydrogen,
1885 – A supernova, S Andromedae, is observed
in the Andromeda Galaxy leading to recognition
of supernovae as a distinct class of novae,
1910 – the spectrum of 40 Eridani B is observed,
making it the first confirmed white dwarf,
1914 – Walter Sydney Adams determines an
incredibly high density for Sirius B,
1926 – Ralph Fowler uses Fermi–Dirac statistics
to explain white dwarf stars,
1930 – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar discovers
the white dwarf maximum mass limit,
1933 – Fritz Zwicky and Walter Baade propose
the neutron star idea and suggest that supernovae
might be created by the collapse of normal
stars to neutron stars—they also point out
that such events can explain the cosmic ray
background,
1939 – Robert Oppenheimer and George Volkoff
calculate the first neutron star models,
1942 – J.J.L.
Duyvendak, Nicholas Mayall, and Jan Oort deduce
that the Crab Nebula is a remnant of the 1054
supernova observed by Chinese astronomers,
1958 – Evry Schatzman, Kent Harrison, Masami
Wakano, and John Wheeler show that white dwarfs
are unstable to inverse beta decay,
1962 – Riccardo Giacconi, Herbert Gursky,
Frank Paolini, and Bruno Rossi discover Scorpius
X-1,
1967 – Jocelyn Bell and Antony Hewish discover
radio pulses from a pulsar, PSR B1919+21,
1967 – J.R. Harries, Kenneth G. McCracken,
R.J.
Francey, and A.G. Fenton discover the first
X-ray transient (Cen X-2),
1968 – Thomas Gold proposes that pulsars
are rotating neutron stars,
1969 – David Staelin, E.C.
Reifenstein, William Cocke, Mike Disney, and
Donald Taylor discover the Crab Nebula pulsar
thus connecting supernovae, neutron stars,
and pulsars,
1971 – Riccardo Giacconi, Herbert Gursky,
Ed Kellogg, R. Levinson, E. Schreier, and
H. Tananbaum discover 4.8 second X-ray pulsations
from Centaurus X-3,
1972 - Charles Kowal discovers the Type Ia
supernova SN 1972e in NGC 5253, which would
be observed for more than a year and become
the basis case for the type,
1974 – Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor discover
the binary pulsar PSR B1913+16,
1977 – Kip Thorne and Anna Żytkow present
a detailed analysis of Thorne–Żytkow objects,
1982 – Donald Backer, Shrinivas Kulkarni,
Carl Heiles, Michael Davis, and Miller Goss
discover the millisecond pulsar PSR B1937+214,
1985 – Michiel van der Klis discovers 30
Hz quasi-periodic oscillations in GX 5-1,
1987 – Ian Shelton discovers SN 1987A in
the Large Magellanic Cloud,
2003 – first double binary pulsar, PSR J0737-3039,
discovered at Parkes Observatory,
2006 – Robert Quimby and P. Mondol discover
SN 2006gy (a possible hypernova) in NGC 1260.
2017 – first observation of neutron star
merger, accompanied with gravitational wave
signal GW170817, short gamma-ray bursts GRB
170817A, optical transient AT 2017gfo and
other electromagnetic signals.
== References ==
