365NEWSX
365NEWSX
Subscribe

Welcome

Researchers Rewind the Clock to Calculate Age and Site of Supernova Blast - HubbleSite

Researchers Rewind the Clock to Calculate Age and Site of Supernova Blast - HubbleSite

Researchers Rewind the Clock to Calculate Age and Site of Supernova Blast - HubbleSite
Jan 14, 2021 1 min, 35 secs

Astronomers sifting through Hubble observations of the supernova remnant, taken 10 years apart, have calculated the cloud's expansion rate.

The researchers traced the path of all the debris flung from the explosion back to the point in space where the doomed star blew apart.

By using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, they retraced the speedy shrapnel from the blast to calculate a more accurate estimate of the location and time of the stellar detonation.

The doomed star left behind an expanding, gaseous corpse, a supernova remnant named 1E 0102.2-7219, which NASA's Einstein Observatory first discovered in X-rays.

However, the ACS data revealed regions where the ejecta slowed down because it was slamming into denser material shed by the star before it exploded as a supernova.

They needed the ejecta that best reflected their original velocities from the explosion, using them to determine an accurate age estimate of the supernova blast.

Based on their estimates, the neutron star must be moving at more than 2 million miles per hour from the center of the explosion to have arrived at its current position.

The suspected neutron star was identified in observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, in combination with data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

"That is pretty fast and at the extreme end of how fast we think a neutron star can be moving, even if it got a kick from the supernova explosion," Banovetz said.

"More recent investigations call into question whether the object is actually the surviving neutron star of the supernova explosion.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency).

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations.

Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

The NASA Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA

AURA’s Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations

Summarized by 365NEWSX ROBOTS

RECENT NEWS

SUBSCRIBE

Get monthly updates and free resources.

CONNECT WITH US

© Copyright 2024 365NEWSX - All RIGHTS RESERVED