Study Illuminates star explosion from 16th Century (twin sun, Cassiopeia const.)

[Gimpy]

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081204/ap_on_sc/sci_tycho_s_supernova

Study illuminates star explosion from 16th century
By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter, Ap Science Writer 1 hr 5 mins ago

NEW YORK – More than 400 years after Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe challenged established wisdom about the heavens by analyzing a strange new light in the sky, scientists say they've finally nailed down just what he saw.

It's no big surprise. Scientists have known the light came from a supernova, a huge star explosion. But what kind of supernova?

A new study confirms that, as expected, it was the common kind that involves the thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf star with a nearby companion.

The research, which analyzed a "light echo" from the long-ago event, is presented in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature by scientists in Germany, Japan and the Netherlands.

The story of what's commonly called Tycho's supernova began on Nov. 11, 1572, when Brahe was astonished to see what he thought was a brilliant new star in the constellation Cassiopeia. The light eventually became as bright as Venus and could be seen for two weeks in broad daylight. After 16 months, it disappeared.

Working before telescopes were invented, Brahe documented with precision that unlike the moon and the planets, the light's position didn't move in relation to the stars. That meant it lay far beyond the moon. That was a shock to the contemporary view that the distant heavens were perfect and unchanging.

The event inspired Brahe to commit himself further to studying the stars, launching a career of meticulous observations that helped lay the foundations of early modern astronomy, said Michael Shank, a professor of the history of science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The direct light from the supernova swept past Earth long ago. But some of it struck dust clouds in deep space, causing them to brighten. That "light echo" was still observable, and the new study was based on analyzing the wavelengths of light from that.

***********************************************************************************************

Good morning! I caught this mention of the constellation Cassiopeia, and thought it was interesting.


Gimpy
still a bit blinky yet

 

[jamie]

Re: Study Illuminates star explosion from 16th Century (twin sun, Cassiopeia con

I haven't given much thought to what this article means but "Cassiopaea" screamed out at me when I read it :) I did instinctively expect it would be posted here as well hehe.

 

[Laura]

Any more details available? Like the distance of the supernova?

 

[1984]

Any more details available? Like the distance of the supernova?

There is a similar story posted on SOTT here: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/170102-Light-echoes-solve-mystery-of-famous-supernova

It offers a bit more data and some additional links. This excerpt references light echoes.

"The light echoes from Tycho's supernova - one of only six recorded in our galaxy in the past 1000 years - were first reported earlier in 2008 by a team led by Armin Rest of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The echoes are around 20 billion times fainter than the light Tycho observed directly in 1572."

 

[christx11]

Any more details available? Like the distance of the supernova?

Tycho's Supernova Remnant - B Cas - SN 1572
-----------------------------------------------------------
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1572
SN 1572 is associated with the radio source G.120·1+1·4. It has an apparent diameter of 7.4 arc minutes, and is located approximately 7,500 light-years (2.3 kpc) from our Solar system.

_http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?mescat.distance=on&Ident=%40166077&Name=SNR+G120.2%2B01.4&submit=display+selected+measurements#lab_meas
2.83 kpc ~ 9225.8 light years

_http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/422419
2.84 kpc ~ 9258.4 light years


It looks to me like the latest research indicates it is around 9200 light years distant


FYI - Cass A from 1680

Cassiopeia A - maybe observed by Jon Flamsteed in 1680
_http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/0237/
Distance Estimate About 10,000 light years

 

[Laura]

From Fox:

_http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,461667,00.html

(Some images on Fox site)

On Nov. 11, 1572, astronomer Tycho Brahe observed a bright "new star" — now known as a supernova — in the constellation Cassiopeia.

Brahe observed the star, which outshone even Venus in the night sky until it faded from sight in March 1574.

Most astronomers then believed that the stars were part of a fixed, unchanging dome equally far from Earth at all points. Brahe argued that the "new star" showed the heavens could change, and that each star had an individual distance.

Now, more than 400 years later, astronomers have use the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii to observe "light echoes" from the stellar blast to determine its origin and type and relate that information to what they see in the supernova remnant today.

A supernova occurs when a star dies violently, sending out an extremely bright outburst of energy.

Some of the light from the original supernova event bounces off dust particles in surrounding interstellar clouds and reaches Earth many years after the direct light passes by; in this case, 436 years ago. These reflections are called "light echoes."

In September, scientists used the Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS) instrument at Subaru, to break apart the light echoes of Supernova 1572 into the signatures of atoms (spectra) present when the star exploded, bearing all the information about the nature of the original blast.

"Using light echoes in supernova remnants is time-traveling in a way, in that it allows us to go back hundreds of years to observe the first light from a supernova event," said Tomonori Usuda, lead project astronomer at Subaru. "We got to relive a significant historical moment and see it as famed astronomer Tycho Brahe did hundreds of years ago. More importantly, we get to see how a supernova in our own galaxy behaves from its origin."

This same team used similar methods to uncover the origin of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A in 2007.

The results of the Subaru study, detailed in the Dec. 3 issue of the journal Nature, showed clear absorption of once-ionized silicon and absence of the hydrogen H-alpha emission in the light echoes — signatures typical of a Type Ia supernova observed at maximum brightness of its outburst.

Type Ia supernovae are generally thought to originate from white dwarf stars in a close binary system. As the gas of the companion star accumulates onto the white dwarf, the white dwarf is progressively compressed, and eventually sets off a runaway nuclear reaction inside that eventually leads to a cataclysmic supernova outburst.

These supernovae are also the primary source of heavy elements in the universe, and play an important role as cosmological distance indicators

The Subaru study found that Tycho's supernova belongs to the majority class of Normal Type Ia, and, as such, is now the first confirmed and precisely classified supernova in our galaxy.

 

[Gaby]

The image is impressive

(AP Photo/NASA)

 

[Vulcan59]

FWIW,

In 2023, amateur astronomer Dana Patchick was looking through images from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer archive and discovered a diffuse, circular object in the constellation of Cassiopeia. He found this apparent nebula was interesting because it was bright in the infrared portion of the spectrum, but virtually invisible in the colors of light visible to our eyes. Dana added this item to the database of the Deep Sky Hunters amateur astronomers group, believing it was a planetary nebula - the quiet remnant of stars in mass similar to the sun. He named it PA 30.

However, professional astronomers who picked it up from there realized that this object is far more than it first seemed. It is, they now believe, the remnant of a lost supernova observed in 1181. And an extremely rare type at that.

An amateur astronomer discovered one-of-a-kind supernova remnant in Cassiopeia -- Sott.net

In 2023, amateur astronomer Dana Patchick was looking through images from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer archive and discovered a diffuse, circular object in the constellation of Cassiopeia. He found this apparent nebula was interesting...

www.sott.net

 

[forest_light]

I don't know if someone has already posted this, or if this is the right place to post...

Star of Wonder...

Webb Reveals Never-Before-Seen Details in Cassiopeia A​

The explosion of a star is a dramatic event, but the remains the star leaves behind can be even more dramatic. A new mid-infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope provides one stunning example. It shows the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A), created by a stellar explosion 340 years ago from Earth’s perspective. Cas A is the youngest known remnant from an exploding, massive star in our galaxy, which makes it a unique opportunity to learn more about how such supernovae occur.

“Cas A represents our best opportunity to look at the debris field of an exploded star and run a kind of stellar autopsy to understand what type of star was there beforehand and how that star exploded,” said Danny Milisavljevic of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, principal investigator of the Webb program that captured these observations.

“Compared to previous infrared images, we see incredible detail that we haven’t been able to access before,” added Tea Temim of Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, a co-investigator on the program.

Cassiopeia A is a prototypical supernova remnant that has been widely studied by a number of ground-based and space-based observatories, including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The multi-wavelength observations can be combined to provide scientists with a more comprehensive understanding of the remnant.

Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is a supernova remnant located about 11,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. It spans approximately 10 light-years. This new image uses data from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to reveal Cas A in a new light.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, D. Milisavljevic (Purdue), T. Temim (Princeton), I. De Looze (Ghent University). Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI).

Dissecting the Image

The striking colors of the new Cas A image, in which infrared light is translated into visible-light wavelengths, hold a wealth of scientific information the team is just beginning to tease out. On the bubble’s exterior, particularly at the top and left, lie curtains of material appearing orange and red due to emission from warm dust. This marks where ejected material from the exploded star is ramming into surrounding circumstellar gas and dust.

Interior to this outer shell lie mottled filaments of bright pink studded with clumps and knots. This represents material from the star itself, which is shining due to a mix of various heavy elements, such as oxygen, argon, and neon, as well as dust emission.

“We’re still trying to disentangle all these sources of emission,” said Ilse De Looze of Ghent University in Belgium, another co-investigator on the program.

The stellar material can also be seen as fainter wisps near the cavity’s interior.

Perhaps most prominently, a loop represented in green extends across the right side of the central cavity. “We’ve nicknamed it the Green Monster in honor of Fenway Park in Boston. If you look closely, you’ll notice that it’s pockmarked with what look like mini-bubbles,” said Milisavljevic. “The shape and complexity are unexpected and challenging to understand.”

Origins of Cosmic Dust – and Us

Among the science questions that Cas A may help answer is: Where does cosmic dust come from? Observations have found that even very young galaxies in the early universe are suffused with massive quantities of dust. It’s difficult to explain the origins of this dust without invoking supernovae, which spew large quantities of heavy elements (the building blocks of dust) across space.

However, existing observations of supernovae have been unable to conclusively explain the amount of dust we see in those early galaxies. By studying Cas A with Webb, astronomers hope to gain a better understanding of its dust content, which can help inform our understanding of where the building blocks of planets and ourselves are created.

“In Cas A, we can spatially resolve regions that have different gas compositions and look at what types of dust were formed in those regions,” explained Temim.

Supernovae like the one that formed Cas A are crucial for life as we know it. They spread elements like the calcium we find in our bones and the iron in our blood across interstellar space, seeding new generations of stars and planets.

“By understanding the process of exploding stars, we’re reading our own origin story,” said Milisavljevic. “I’m going to spend the rest of my career trying to understand what’s in this data set.”

The Cas A remnant spans about 10 light-years and is located 11,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

James Webb Space Telescope's 'Cosmic Christmas Bauble' earns spot in White House Advent Calendar​

One fascinating new feature seen by NIRCam is a blob of gas and dust that researchers have named "Baby Cas A." This name is fitting because the spot of matter appears to be the offspring of the main supernova wreckage, or rather light from the explosion that is being reflected from warm dust that glows as it cools. Located around 170 light-years behind Cas A, Baby Cas A is likely to be an object of great fascination to astronomers because of its intricate dust patterns.
The NIRCam image also shows that Cas A is surrounded by other light echo "offspring" of the main stellar explosion — perhaps we're soon to investigate other baubles on the JWST's incomprehensibly large cosmic Christmas tree.