APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2009 Jan 31)

Post a reply


This question is a means of preventing automated form submissions by spambots.
Smilies
:D :) :ssmile: :( :o :shock: :? 8-) :lol2: :x :P :oops: :cry: :evil: :roll: :wink: :!: :?: :idea: :arrow: :| :mrgreen:
View more smilies

BBCode is ON
[img] is ON
[url] is ON
Smilies are ON

Topic review
   

Expand view Topic review: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2009 Jan 31)

Re: Simeis 147: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by aristarchusinexile » Tue Feb 03, 2009 5:38 pm

I sometimes wonder how much of a bow shock wave results from speed of the object through a medium, and speed of the medium past the object .. rocks in currents of water, for instance, creating similar effects.

Re: Simeis 147: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by kovil » Mon Feb 02, 2009 10:36 pm

<< "What's that puffy, cloud-like object that appears near the lower left corner of the Simeis 147 photo?" >>

It's a black widow spider's egg sack nest, and the big closer one is a work in progress.

Why oh why do mainstream astrophysicists see these objects like Simeis 147 with pulsars at their center as described in the APOD description, of being explosions of kinetic energy with bow shock waves energizing the surrounding material, and having neutron stars at their center for the pulsar?

I guess it's because they are ignorant of how electrical the universe and cosmos truely are. So sad. It will be a long time before they wake up. Dommage.

My black widow spider description makes as much sense as the neutron star and bow shock wave description, they are both equally incorrect.

Re: Simeis 147: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by aristarchusinexile » Mon Feb 02, 2009 7:02 pm

Distance means nothing when you're in love .. for awhile that is .. which is a good reason to develop hyperjump so Miss Piggy and I can .. oops .. I apologize, I've been living alone too long.

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by Tara_Li » Mon Feb 02, 2009 6:24 pm

Chris Peterson wrote:But the reality is, figuring out the distance to most objects inside our galaxy (unless they are very close) is difficult, and most published distances have high uncertainties. So who really knows? Of course, that's one reason why scientists don't generally bother to assign local supernovas to any kind of common time reference frame. Scientifically, all that matters is when they are observed. (That's different for supernovas at cosmological distances, but in that case redshift is used, not distance as such.)
What are the usual error bars for various ranges? How far does astronometry/triangulation get us at this point, and how accurate do the astronomers feel the various standard lighthouses work? After all, you've got triangulation, then standard brightness of main-sequence stars, followed by cephids, followed by standard supernovae... each being used to calibrate the next. Personally, I'm thinking there's enough built in iffy-ness there to put the Andromeda Galaxy anywhere from 500 KLY to 6 MLY.

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by Chris Peterson » Sun Feb 01, 2009 11:02 pm

neufer wrote:SN 185 is about 8,200 light-years away.

What you probably mean is SN 393...
No, I meant SN 185. It's been tentatively associated with SNR RCW 86, for which Chris Smith makes a pretty good case for a ~3000 ly distance. But the reality is, figuring out the distance to most objects inside our galaxy (unless they are very close) is difficult, and most published distances have high uncertainties. So who really knows? Of course, that's one reason why scientists don't generally bother to assign local supernovas to any kind of common time reference frame. Scientifically, all that matters is when they are observed. (That's different for supernovas at cosmological distances, but in that case redshift is used, not distance as such.)

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by neufer » Sun Feb 01, 2009 8:27 pm

Chris Peterson wrote:
neufer wrote:I now think that SN 1054 (M1: The Crab Nebula) at ~7,000 years ago [= 954 years + 6,000 (light-)years] was the last known supernova to occur.
How about SN 185, at ~4800 years (1823 years ago + ly distant)?
SN 185 is about 8,200 light-years away.

What you probably mean is SN 393 which may or may not be G347.3-0.5:

But if it is... it wins at ~4600 years (1615 years ago + 3,000 ly distant).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
<<SN 393 is the name of an event considered as probable a Supernova having been observed in the year 393 by Astronome S Chinese. The observation of this event had been catalogued according to the habit of the time under the name of “invited star”.

Historical testimonys

Two historical sources mention this invited star: the Jinshu and the Songshu . Those make a nearly identical account of the phenomenon and result probably from the same source, now disappeared. The astronomical part of the testimony (which according to the habits of the time was always accompanied by its astrological interpretation ) indicates:

“In 18th year of the Taiyuan period of the reign of the emperor Xiaowu, at the time of the second lunar month, a star invited appeared in Wei. It remained until the ninth lunar month, where it is extinct. ”

The chronology of the Chinese world makes it possible to date precisely this testimony at the year 393, the second month lunar corresponding to the period being spread out February 27th with the March 28th, and the ninth month of the October 22nd to the November 19th. The reason length of the interval between the second and the ninth month comes from the addition this year there of an intercalated month to the lunisolar Calendrier into force in the Chinese empire. The objective was to compensate for the shift of calendar which would only cause of the twelve months lunar years (correspondent at one duration lower than the 365,25 days, to see Chinese Astronomie).

Interpretation

In the most unfavourable case, the invited star remained visible of at the end of March at the end of October, that is to say more than 200 days. That invalidates the assumption that this event corresponded to a Comet. The distinction between a Nova and a Supernova, only other possible explanations of an event of invited the star type, is more difficult to establish. Testimony mentions that the event occurred in Wei. Wei corresponds here in the name of a lunar Loge, i.e. a band of Right ascension, and a Astérisme located in the Constellation of the Scorpion, corresponding to the tail of the animal according to the Western constellation division. If testimony refers to the lunar cabin, the galactic Latitude is not specified, and the event has few chances to be itself produced in the galactic Plan. In such a case, it would not be possible to associate the event with a supernova. If testimony refers to the asterism associated with the lunar cabin, then, this one being exactly in the galactic plane, an interpretation of the supernova type is largely more probable. The only indication making it possible to take a decision between these two assumption is the term in (“ zhong ”), which strongly suggests that one speaks about the asterism, whose stars form a convex polygon.

A problem with the interpretation of the asterism comes from what at the time of the ninth lunar month, the proximity of the Sun returned the observation of this area of the impossible sky. Except imagining that the star was very brilliant, in which case the proximity of the Sun did not prevent its observation, the period of the ninth month as time of last visibility is not easily possible. It should however be noted that the one month errors are not rare in the reports of observations of the time (as attested by the study of the mentions of the planetary conjunctions which can be dated precisely). On the assumption that the month of last visibility is in fact the eighth month lunar, it is possible to make coherent the whole of the testimony, which strongly suggests an interpretation of supernova.

Identification of the remanent one

The area of the asterism Wei , near to the galactic Center, is very rich in remanent of supernova. Even by keeping only the remanent ones which has all the characteristics of remanent young people, there remain two remanent possible, SNR G348.5+00.1 and SNR G348.7+00.3. The two remanent ones are estimated to be at a distance from 10,2 ± 3,5 kpc, deduced from the measurement of the absorption of the neutral Hydrogène. This measurement of distance, combined with the angular Size of these objects and at their speed of typical expansion (lower or equalizes with 10 000 km/S, to see Remanent supernova). can be made compatible with the age of the supernova if one considers the low fork of the estimate of distance. This fork bases of distance is in any event made necessary to explain the observation with the naked eye of such events. Another assumption, suggested by Z.R. Wang, is that the remanent one is in fact SNR G347.3-00.5 (also named X-ray J1713.7-3946). To reconcile its angular size with the age of remanent, it would be necessary that this one is located at a distance from 1,1 kpc. Other authors however point out that this remanent could be associated with a Région HII and molecular clouds, whose distance is estimated at 6 kpc, returning in this case the association of remanent with this event because its real size would be then too large. In any event, the identification of remanent is impossible today because of the big number of candidates and uncertainties in their measurements of distance. The nature of supernova of this event seems on the other hand much more firmly established, although not some in the absence of one only and single candidate of remanent. >>
----------------------------------------------

Re: Simeis 147: What's that on the left?

by bystander » Sun Feb 01, 2009 6:11 pm

Heliocracy wrote:What's that puffy, cloud-like object that appears near the lower left corner of the Simeis 147 photo?
Tara_Li wrote:In the full-sized image, there's an object located at about 8 o'clock to the main image showing an extent. I'm curious as to what it is (obviously, it's probably a planetary nebula), and I'm used to stars in Hubble images showing some coloration - so I'm wondering why the stars in this one don't, and why that planetary nebula doesn't show at least some colors. Is this composited with one of the earth-based star surveys?
Chris Peterson wrote:It's a diffuse nebula, not a planetary. It is cataloged as LBN 826, or Sharpless 2-242.
http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 82#p100711

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by Chris Peterson » Sun Feb 01, 2009 5:10 pm

neufer wrote:I now think that SN 1054 (M1: The Crab Nebula) at ~7,000 years ago [= 954 years + 6,000 (light-)years] was the last known supernova to occur.
How about SN 185, at ~4800 years (1823 years ago + 3000 ly distant)?

Simeis 147: What's that on the left?

by Heliocracy » Sun Feb 01, 2009 4:49 pm

What's that puffy, cloud-like object that appears near the lower left corner of the Simeis 147 photo?

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by neufer » Sun Feb 01, 2009 4:31 pm

Chris Peterson wrote:
neufer wrote:
Chris Peterson wrote:I certainly think that there's a valid frame of reference that sets one meaning of "really happened" to mean the time it was observed here plus the light time for the signal to get here.
So, by that definition, I guess:

Tycho's Supernova at ~8,000 years [= 436 years + 7,500 (light-)years] was the last known supernova to occur.

Kepler's supernova at 404 years is "the most recent stellar explosion seen to occur within our Milky Way galaxy."

And Supernova remnant G1.9+0.3 at ~140 years is the youngest known supernova remnant (SNR) in the Milky Way Galaxy.
I'm not following your reasoning here. If you're trying to place all these events into a common time reference, don't you need to include the distances for the latter two?
Sorry, I was NOT trying to place all these events into a common time reference.

Rather, I was trying to clarify in my mind which known supernova
actually occurred last in a Machian universe... and I got it wrong. :oops:

I now think that SN 1054 (M1: The Crab Nebula) at ~7,000 years ago
[= 954 years + 6,000 (light-)years] was the last known supernova to occur.

Tycho's Supernova & SN 1006 are tied for second at ~8,000 years ago.

I think this is sort of "illuminating" (and may even become a Jeopardy question).
-------------------------------------------------------
Also, the unobserved supernova remnant associated with 716 Hertz pulsar PSR J1748-2446ad
may well be the youngest "known" supernova remnant (SNR) in the Milky Way Galaxy.
<<The scientists discovered the pulsar, named PSR J1748-2446ad, in a globular cluster of stars called TERZAN 5, located some 28,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. The newly-discovered pulsar is spinning 716 times per second, or at 716 Hertz (Hz), readily beating the previous record of 642 Hz from a pulsar discovered in 1982. The scientists say the object's fast rotation speed means that it cannot be any larger than about 20 miles across. According to Hessels, "If it were any larger, material from the surface would be flung into orbit around the star." The scientists' calculation assumed that the neutron star contains less than two times the mass of the Sun, an assumption that is consistent with the masses of all known neutron stars.>>

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by Chris Peterson » Sun Feb 01, 2009 3:48 pm

neufer wrote:
Chris Peterson wrote:I certainly think that there's a valid frame of reference that sets one meaning of "really happened" to mean the time it was observed here plus the light time for the signal to get here.
So, by that definition, I guess:

Tycho's Supernova at ~8,000 years [= 436 years + 7,500 (light-)years] was the last known supernova to occur.

Kepler's supernova at 404 years is "the most recent stellar explosion seen to occur within our Milky Way galaxy."

And Supernova remnant G1.9+0.3 at ~140 years is the youngest known supernova remnant (SNR) in the Milky Way Galaxy.
I'm not following your reasoning here. If you're trying to place all these events into a common time reference, don't you need to include the distances for the latter two?

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by neufer » Sun Feb 01, 2009 12:26 pm

Chris Peterson wrote:
neufer wrote:
Chris Peterson wrote: Which also means it's 40,000 years old. The bottom line is that it isn't particularly useful to estimate when it "really" happened based on its distance (although that may be a fun thing to do).
So you agree that it "really" happened 40,000 years + distance in light years ago.
I put "really" in quotes to reflect the very difficult to define meaning of the word. I certainly think that there's a valid frame of reference that sets one meaning of "really happened" to mean the time it was observed here plus the light time for the signal to get here. But as I said, that usage isn't generally very useful, which is why you don't usually see it used except in explanations for a lay audience. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
So, by that definition, I guess:

Tycho's Supernova at ~8,000 years [= 436 years + 7,500 (light-)years] was the last known supernova to occur.

Kepler's supernova at 404 years is "the most recent stellar explosion seen to occur within our Milky Way galaxy."

And Supernova remnant G1.9+0.3 at ~140 years is the youngest known supernova remnant (SNR) in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Image
Composite image of Supernova remnant G1.9+0.3, using a 1985 radio images (blue) and a 2008 x-ray image (orange). The difference in size revealed that the supernova remnant is still expanding rapidly, and allowed astronomers to calculate its age.

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by Chris Peterson » Sun Feb 01, 2009 4:26 am

neufer wrote:
Chris Peterson wrote: Which also means it's 40,000 years old. The bottom line is that it isn't particularly useful to estimate when it "really" happened based on its distance (although that may be a fun thing to do).
So you agree that it "really" happened 40,000 years + distance in light years ago.
I put "really" in quotes to reflect the very difficult to define meaning of the word. I certainly think that there's a valid frame of reference that sets one meaning of "really happened" to mean the time it was observed here plus the light time for the signal to get here. But as I said, that usage isn't generally very useful, which is why you don't usually see it used except in explanations for a lay audience. Nothing wrong with that, of course.

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by neufer » Sun Feb 01, 2009 2:45 am

Chris Peterson wrote:
neufer wrote:
Chris Peterson wrote:It is generally customary to ignore distance. Under the conventions of special relativity, an event "happens" when it is observed. So it is perfectly correct to say that the SN happened 40,000 years ago, regardless of how far away it actually is. I took the sentence as an explanation of that definition of an event's occurrence time.
The important thing is not so much when a prehistoric supernova "happens"
but rather how old the SNR is that we observe now.

The Simeis 147 SNR that we observe now is apparently about 40,000 years old.
Is there a difference? It "happened" 40,000 years ago, because that's when it was observed from Earth.
Who exactly observed it from Earth? ...Or as the old saying goes:
"If Helen Keller fell down in the woods, would she make a sound?"
Chris Peterson wrote: Which also means it's 40,000 years old. The bottom line is that it isn't particularly useful to estimate when it "really" happened based on its distance (although that may be a fun thing to do).
So you agree that it "really" happened 40,000 years + distance in light years ago.

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by astrolabe » Sun Feb 01, 2009 2:40 am

Hello All,

Just an afterthought: 3,000 ly away is still fairly close to us regardless isn't it? I mean after all we are in a galaxy roughly 100,000 ly across.

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by Chris Peterson » Sun Feb 01, 2009 12:53 am

neufer wrote:
Chris Peterson wrote:It is generally customary to ignore distance. Under the conventions of special relativity, an event "happens" when it is observed. So it is perfectly correct to say that the SN happened 40,000 years ago, regardless of how far away it actually is. I took the sentence as an explanation of that definition of an event's occurrence time.
The important thing is not so much when a prehistoric supernova "happens"
but rather how old the SNR is that we observe now.

The Simeis 147 SNR that we observe now is apparently about 40,000 years old.
Is there a difference? It "happened" 40,000 years ago, because that's when it was observed from Earth. Which also means it's 40,000 years old. The bottom line is that it isn't particularly useful to estimate when it "really" happened based on its distance (although that may be a fun thing to do).

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by neufer » Sun Feb 01, 2009 12:36 am

Chris Peterson wrote:
Zigomer Trubahin wrote:Just one observation, the text says "This supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years - meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 40,000 years ago." I don't see the logical correlation between the two parts of the sentence. Light from a thing the age of about 40,000 years can reach the Earth any time (any time later than 40,000 years ago), depending on the distance. It could reach us today, or tomorrow. As this cloud is 3,000 ly away, the time its light first reached the Earth should have been about 37,000 years ago. Not that it matters much.:)
It is generally customary to ignore distance. Under the conventions of special relativity, an event "happens" when it is observed. So it is perfectly correct to say that the SN happened 40,000 years ago, regardless of how far away it actually is. I took the sentence as an explanation of that definition of an event's occurrence time.
The important thing is not so much when a prehistoric supernova "happens"
but rather how old the SNR is that we observe now.

The Simeis 147 SNR that we observe now is apparently about 40,000 years old.

The weird thing is that 3 years ago Simeis 147 was apparently about 100,000 years old!
[b] http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap051129.html [/b] wrote: Explanation: It's easy to get lost following the intricate filaments in this detailed image of faint supernova remnant Simeis 147. Seen towards the constellation Taurus it covers nearly 3 degrees (6 full moons) on the sky corresponding to a width of 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud's estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. The above image is a color composite of 66 blue and red color band images from the National Geographic Palomar Observatory Sky Survey taken with the wide field Samuel Oschin 48-inch Telescope. The area of the sky shown covers over 70 times the area of the full Moon. This supernova remnant has an apparent age of about 100,000 years - meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 100,000 years ago - but this expanding remnant is not the only aftermath. The cosmic catastrophe also left behind a spinning neutron star or pulsar, all that remains of the original star's core.
Simeis 147 is the Benjamin Button of supernova remnants!
Benjamin Button: Some people, were born to sit by a river. Some get struck by lightning. Some have an ear for music. Some are artists. Some swim. Some know buttons. Some know Shakespeare. Some are mothers. And some people, dance.

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by astrolabe » Sun Feb 01, 2009 12:25 am

Hello Chris,
Chris Peterson wrote: I don't know. It's a complicated question. Intensity is all we have to work with in the image, and that is determined by two variables, density and temperature. Somebody studying this area closely could use spectroscopy to look at the widths of the emission lines, which (due to Doppler broadening) could be used to deduce the temperatures in different areas.

Also, the ionization energies are different for the three elements, so just because an area looks like a single color, that doesn't necessarily mean it consists of only the one element. And there's some continuum energy diluting things as well.

Finally, I suspect the elements are not homogeneous at all. When a star explodes, it has an internal shell structure consisting of different elemental zones. You'd think some of that structure would be preserved in the remnant- although it might be so chaotic that you couldn't work backwards to learn anything about the progenitor.
Thank you for sticking with me on this and for your astute appraisal of my question. I'm glad I persisted for it resulted in a very abundant and informative answer that I can understand. Good thought order too!

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by Chris Peterson » Sat Jan 31, 2009 11:57 pm

Zigomer Trubahin wrote:Just one observation, the text says "This supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years - meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 40,000 years ago." I don't see the logical correlation between the two parts of the sentence. Light from a thing the age of about 40,000 years can reach the Earth any time (any time later than 40,000 years ago), depending on the distance. It could reach us today, or tomorrow. As this cloud is 3,000 ly away, the time its light first reached the Earth should have been about 37,000 years ago. Not that it matters much.:)
It is generally customary to ignore distance. Under the conventions of special relativity, an event "happens" when it is observed. So it is perfectly correct to say that the SN happened 40,000 years ago, regardless of how far away it actually is. I took the sentence as an explanation of that definition of an event's occurrence time.

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by Zigomer Trubahin » Sat Jan 31, 2009 11:40 pm

Just one observation, the text says "This supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years - meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 40,000 years ago." I don't see the logical correlation between the two parts of the sentence. Light from a thing the age of about 40,000 years can reach the Earth any time (any time later than 40,000 years ago), depending on the distance. It could reach us today, or tomorrow. As this cloud is 3,000 ly away, the time its light first reached the Earth should have been about 37,000 years ago. Not that it matters much.:)

What hath God wrought!

by neufer » Sat Jan 31, 2009 5:40 pm

---------------------------------
You Tube videos: Cassiopeia A Supernova - Expanding

3D Fly-Through of the Supernova Remnant, Cassiopeia A
---------------------------------
Cassiopeia A and Supernova 1680 or 1667
Supernova 1680 or 1667 (3 Cassiopeiae ?) and Supernova Remnant G111.7-2.1 (Cassiopeia A, 3C 461) in Cassiopeia

Right Ascension: 23 : 23.4 (h:m)
[Numbers 23:23] What hath God wrought!

Declination: +58 : 50 (deg:m)
Distance: 11,000 (ly)
Visual brightness: 6? (mag)
Apparent Dimension: 5 (arc min)

<<This is the [next] youngest known supernova remnant in our Milky Way Galaxy, and the strongest extrasolar radio source in the sky. Calculating its expansion back, astronomers have found that the supernova must have blown up around the year 1667. Strangely, it was not widely noticed by that epoch's astronomers. However, as astronomy historian William Ashworth found out in 1980, it was perhaps observed by John Flamsteed on August 16, 1680, who cataloged a star near its position as "3 Cassiopeiae". However, he did not recognize it as a supernova, or "New Star", or anything particular else, and simply cataloged it as ordinary star. As this star was not noticed elsewhere, it cannot have been much brighter than 6th magnitude.

Later astronomers didn't find any sufficiently bright star near Flamsteed's position, and classified his catalog entry as erroneous.

As the supernova was rather close, its observed maximum brightness was extremely faint for a supernova, only about 250,000 solar luminosities, fainter than the brighter "normal" stars. This indicates that it was heavily obscured by interstellar matter.

The supernova remnant was found among the earliest discrete radio sources, in 1947 by radio astronomers from Cambridge, England, and is the strongest radio source in the sky beyond the solar system. This radio source was first named Cassiopeia A and later cataloged 3C 461. Its optical counterpart coudn't be found until a more precise position was obtained, by radio interferometry in 1950. Consequently, David Dewhirst of Cambridge obtained first deep optical photos of this region in the sky and discovered a strange faint nebula, which was then investigated by Walter Baade and Rudolph Minkowski with the then-new Palomar 5-meter telescope (Baade & Minkowski, 1954). Spectroscopic observations soon confirmed its nature as the rapidly expanding shell of a supernova remnant, also cataloged as G111.7-2.1. Within two years, American astronomers were able to determine its angular expansion rate, and calculated back that the expansion must have started around the year AD 1667, as mentioned above. Nevertheless, until Ashworth' publication of 1980, it was thought that the supernova had not been observed because of heavy obstruction. Even now there are some doubts, as the position of "3 Cassipeiae" does not exactly co-incide with that of Cassiopeia A, and some historians think Flamsteed may simply have cataloged an erroneous position of another star.

Cassiopeia A was the first target to be photographed by Nasa's new Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO), also known as AXAF. It was always one of the preferred targets of X-ray astronomers, in particular with the Chandra orbital observatory.>>

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by Chris Peterson » Sat Jan 31, 2009 4:53 pm

astrolabe wrote:A temperature gradient possibly related to light intensity would be an advantagious correlation indeed I would assume. Also areas of the different emissions (with allowances for overlap) seem to be pretty well defined- could this indicate temperature differences as well if each element emits only at certain temperatures- not soley dependent on the heat of the shocked ionized gasses? in other words, is there any indications that the hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen are homogenous throughout the nebula or are we limited to only the areas of emission as the element locators?
I don't know. It's a complicated question. Intensity is all we have to work with in the image, and that is determined by two variables, density and temperature. Somebody studying this area closely could use spectroscopy to look at the widths of the emission lines, which (due to Doppler broadening) could be used to deduce the temperatures in different areas.

Also, the ionization energies are different for the three elements, so just because an area looks like a single color, that doesn't necessarily mean it consists of only the one element. And there's some continuum energy diluting things as well.

Finally, I suspect the elements are not homogeneous at all. When a star explodes, it has an internal shell structure consisting of different elemental zones. You'd think some of that structure would be preserved in the remnant- although it might be so chaotic that you couldn't work backwards to learn anything about the progenitor.

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by neufer » Sat Jan 31, 2009 4:47 pm

aristarchusinexile wrote:Remarkably similar to computer simulations of void bubble expansion.
Is that any way to talk about our beloved Link Hogthrob?

Re: Pigs in Space (APOD 2009 January 31)

by aristarchusinexile » Sat Jan 31, 2009 4:40 pm

Remarkably similar to computer simulations of void bubble expansion.

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance

by neufer » Sat Jan 31, 2009 4:30 pm

---------------------------------------
A supernova remnant (SNR) passes through the following stages as it expands:

Denial: 1. Free expansion of the ejecta, until they sweep up their own weight in circumstellar or interstellar medium. This can last tens to a few hundred years depending on the density of the surrounding gas.

Anger: 2. Sweeping up of a shell of shocked circumstellar and interstellar gas. This begins the Sedov-Taylor phase, which can be well modeled by a self-similar analytic solution. Strong X-ray emission traces the strong shock waves and hot shocked gas.

Bargaining: 3. Cooling of the shell, to form a thin (< 1 pc), dense (1-100 million atoms per cubic metre) shell surrounding the hot (few million kelvin) interior. This is the pressure-driven snowplow phase. The shell can be clearly seen in optical emission from recombining ionized hydrogen and ionized oxygen atoms.

Depression: 4. Cooling of the interior. The dense shell continues to expand from its own momentum, in a momentum-driven snowplow. This stage is best seen in the radio emission from neutral hydrogen atoms.

Acceptance: 5. Merging with the surrounding interstellar medium. When the supernova remnant slows to the speed of the random velocities in the surrounding medium, after roughly a million years, it will merge into the general turbulent flow, contributing its remaining kinetic energy to the turbulence.
---------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_remnant
.....................................
<<A supernova remnant (SNR) is the structure resulting from the gigantic explosion of a star in a supernova. The supernova remnant is bounded by an expanding shock wave, and consists of ejected material expanding from the explosion, and the interstellar material it sweeps up and shocks along the way. Supernova explosions expel much or all of the stellar material with velocities as much as 1% the speed of light, some 3,000 km/s. When this material collides with the surrounding circumstellar or interstellar gas, it forms a shock wave that can heat the gas up to temperatures as high as 10 million K, forming a plasma.

Perhaps the most famous and best-observed young SNR was formed by SN 1987A, a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud that was discovered in 1987. Other well-known, older, supernova remnants include Tycho (SN 1572), a remnant named after Tycho Brahe, who recorded the brightness of its original explosion (AD 1572) and Kepler (SN 1604), named after Johannes Kepler. The most recent remnant in our galaxy is G1.9+0.3, discovered in the galactic center and estimated to have gone supernova 140 years ago.
---------------------------------------
Types of supernova remnant

There are three types of supernova remnant:

* Shell-like, such as Cassiopeia A.

* Composite, in which a shell contains a central pulsar wind nebula, such as G11.2-0.3 or G21.5-0.9.

* Mixed-morphology (also called "thermal composite") remnants, in which central thermal X-ray emission is seen, enclosed by a radio shell. The thermal X-rays are primarily from swept-up interstellar material, rather than supernova ejecta. Examples of this class include the SNRs W28 and W44. (Confusingly, W44 additionally contains a pulsar and pulsar wind nebula; so it is simultaneously both a "classic" composite and a thermal composite.)
---------------------------------------
. Origin of cosmic rays

Supernova remnants are considered the major source of Galactic cosmic rays. The connection between cosmic rays and supernovas was first suggested by Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky in 1934. Vitaly Ginzburg and Sergei Syrovatskii in 1964 remarked that if the efficiency of cosmic ray acceleration in supernova remnants is about 10 percent, the cosmic ray losses of the Milky Way are compensated. This hypothesis is supported by a specific mechanism called "shock wave acceleration" based on Enrico Fermi's ideas, which is still under development. Indeed, Enrico Fermi proposed in 1949 a model for the acceleration of cosmic rays through particle collisions with magnetic clouds in the interstellar medium. This process, known as the "Second Order Fermi Mechanism", increases particle energy during head-on collisions, resulting in a steady gain in energy. A later model to produce Fermi Acceleration was generated by a powerful shock front moving through space. Particles that repeatedly cross the front of the shock can gain significant increases in energy. This became known as the "First Order Fermi Mechanism".

Supernova remnants can provide the energetic shock fronts required to generate ultra-high energy cosmic rays. Observation of the SN 1006 remnant in the X-ray has shown synchrotron emission consistent with it being a source of cosmic rays. However, for energies higher than about 10^15 eV a different mechanism is required as supernova remnants cannot provide sufficient energy.>>
---------------------------------------

Top