Supernova Survivor

[Bible Speaks]

Supernova Survivor

A supernova explosion marks the violent end of a massive star’s life. The death throes are tremendously energetic, with the supernova capable of outshining an entire galaxy. Some of these blasts are so brilliant that they have been spotted in our daytime skies. The wreckage left behind - a stellar debris field known as a supernova remnant (SNR) - glows brightly in the X-ray spectrum for thousands of years. These are truly cataclysmic events. What could possibly survive such devastation?

Well, on rare occasions, a companion star can. Researchers are studying one such possible example in the Large Magellanic Cloud, some 160,000 light-years from Earth. Lying within an ionized field of hydrogen called DEM L241 is a supernova remnant. The Chandra X-ray Observatory has found an point-like X-ray source, probably the neutron star or black hole created when the star went supernova. This X-ray source is at the same location as a massive star in the SNR. The data suggests this is a binary pair, with the neutron star or black hole in orbit with a star much larger than our Sun. If confirmed, this would be only the third instance of such a binary pair found in a supernova remnant. 

Image caption: Chandra X-ray data (purple) shows the supernova remnant, while ground based telescopes were used to highlight the ionized hydrogen cloud (yellow and cyan). Optical data (white) from the Digitized Sky Survey shows the stars in this image, which is roughly 1,100 light-years across.

-JF

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/F.Seward et al; Optical: NOAO/CTIO/MCELS, DSS

Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2014/deml241/