LONELY SUPERNOVA
This is the supernova SN 100, the brightest exploding star ever seen with the naked eye in recorded history. The star explosion was witnessed in the year 1006 CE (Common Era) across the Earth, above the southern horizon of the night sky in the constellation Lupus, just south of Scorpio. The supernova exploded about 7,100 light years away and was so bright at its peak that it was about one quarter the brightness of the moon, several times brighter than Venus.
SN 1006 is a Type 1a supernova; these occur when one star provides enough fuel for its dying companion star, a white dwarf, to trigger a nuclear explosion. Our sun, as well as 90 percent of all stars in our galaxy, will end up as white dwarfs, made up of their dying cores. Type 1a supernovae are formed in two ways; the slower one involves a still living star dumping its gas onto a white dwarf, and the other faster method is where two white dwarfs merge. The slower way leaves the white dwarf’s companion behind, while the fast way blows away both white dwarfs.
Astronomers have been unable to find the companion star to SN 1006, despite looking in detail through the space 16.5 light-years in diameter around the supernova, using data from the Paranal Observatory in Chile. This suggests the supernova took the fast route. Combined with previous results, the findings suggest less than 20 percent of Type 1a supernovas occur via the slow route.
Understanding the causes behind the explosions gives scientists more information about the rate at which the universe is expanding, and in turn why this expansion appears to be accelerating.
The image is a composite image of the SN 1006 supernova remnant.
-TEL
Image credit: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140712.html
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/G.Cassam-Chenaï, J.Hughes et al.; Radio: NRAO/AUI/NSF/GBT/VLA/Dyer, Maddalena & Cornwell; Optical: Middlebury College/F.Winkler, NOAO/AURA/NSF/CTIO Schmidt & DSS
