Past, Present, Future

Kepler published in 1606 the book De stella nova in pede Serpentarii (The new star in the foot of Ophiuchus). This book is the most complete archive of information on the new star, which is called today “Kepler’s supernova”. The remnant of Kepler’s supernova has been detected in the sky in 1941, and is still expanding. Recent X- and gamma-ray studies have demonstrated that this remnant is a likely site of cosmic ray acceleration. The first optical observations by the scientists of the seventeenth century, combined with new data, tell us a lot about the evolution of supernovae and open key questions in astrophysics.