From the September 11, 1937, issue

HERON IN NEW YORK ZOO HAS LONG LEASE ON LIFE

Herons, of whatever species, are invariably beautiful; and the idyllic little scene shown on the front cover of this issue of the Science News Letter adds a touch of feathered romance to the beauty.

But alas! the idyll was shattered. One of the pair died, and the widowed survivor was alone.

SUPER-NOVA IS 500,000,000 TIMES BRIGHTER THAN SUN

A gigantic stellar explosion, producing 500 million times as much light as the sun, and announced as the sixteenth supernova of all history, was discovered at the Palomar Mountain observatory of the California Institute of Technology.

This new star, so distant that it has taken its light about 3 million years to reach the Earth, has burst from an obscurity that could barely be pierced by the most powerful telescopes to take its place among the brighter stars. It is situated roughly midway between the Big Dipper and bright star Arcturus in the northern sky. It is not quite bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye.

The discovery was made by Dr. Fritz Zwicky. It was confirmed by observations of the supernova’s spectrum made at the Mt. Wilson Observatory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington by Milton Humason and was further studied by Dr. Walter Baade.

If such a stellar explosion happened in the vicinity of the Earth and sun and its planets, it would undoubtedly wipe them out.

“The appearance of a supernova in any given system of stars, such as our own, for example, is a very rare occurrence which happens perhaps only once in several hundred years,” Dr. F.H. Seares of the Mt. Wilson Observatory pointed out. “Of the numerous novae that have appeared in our own system, only one, Tycho’s star of 1572, was perhaps bright enough to be classed as a supernova. For that reason, search has turned to the extragalactic systems of stars, of which many thousand are bright enough to serve as a means of increasing the chance of discovering one of these catastrophic outbursts.”

OCEAN BOTTOM SHAKEN IN NEW ZEALAND REGION

A strong earthquake shook the bottom of the Pacific Ocean near the Kermadec Islands, about 800 miles northeast of Wellington, New Zealand, on Wednesday, Sept. 1. Location of the epicenter was determined by seismologists of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey on the basis of telegraphic data transmitted through Science Service.

The epicenter was in approximately 31 degrees south latitude, 179 degrees west longitude. Time of origin was 8:39.9 p.m., New Zealand time. Stations reporting were those of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey at San Juan, Puerto Rico, Honolulu, Hawaiian Territory, and Sitka, Alaska, and those of the Jesuit Seismological Association at Fordham University, New York City, and Weston College, Mass.