Astronomers investigating the leftovers of a supernova photographed using NASA telescopes have discovered evidence that might assist establish the star’s end chronology. The supernova remnant, known as SNR 0519-69.0, is the result of a white dwarf star explosion.
After reaching critical mass, the star exploded in a thermonuclear explosion, according to NASA’s Chandra Ray Observatory. Stars often do this by absorbing mass from a companion star or merging with another dwarf star. This type of supernova is known as a Type Ia, and scientists use it for anything from analysing thermonuclear explosions to determining the distance to galaxies billions of light-years distant.
SNR 0519-69.0, or SNR 0519 for short, is a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a tiny galaxy around 160,000 light years from Earth. This composite image was created using X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Low, medium, and high energy X-rays from the supernova remnant are portrayed in green, blue, and purple, with these colours overlapping to seem white in certain locations. The red border of the remnant and the white stars around the remnant are from optical data.
Scientists “rewinded” the star development and explosion that culminated in SNR 0519 using data from Chandra, Hubble, and NASA’s defunct Spitzer Space Telescope. They discovered when the star burst and learnt about its surroundings. Their findings were reported in The Astrophysical Journal.
They analysed Hubble photos of SNR 0519 taken in 2010, 2011, and 2020 to determine the velocity of the particles in the blast waves caused by the explosions. According to their estimations, it varies between 6 and 9 million kilometres per hour. If the speed was closer to the high end of that estimate, the light from the explosion would have reached Earth around 670 years ago.
However, it seems more probable that the material has slowed down since the star’s outburst, which occurred 670 years ago. The researchers discovered that the brightest spots in X-ray pictures contain the slowest-moving particles. They also discovered that the fastest-moving substance had no X-ray emission.