Jellyfish Nebula holds signature of initial stellar fireballs
Posted 12.01.2020 at 8:43 am
0 Comments
Jellyfish Nebula: Suzaku detected X-rays produced when heavily ionized iron atoms recapture an electron. This view combines infrared images from the ground (red, green) with X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory (blue). JAXA/NASA/Suzaku, Tom Bash, John Fox/Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF
A stellar explosion about 4,000 years ago caused a blast wave to travel through dense gas and dust surrounding a dying star. That heated some of the gas to temperatures as high as 100 million degrees F (55 million C). The expanding nebula of gas and dust gradually began to cool, but collisions between particles remain rare because of the extremely thin density -- about a single atom per volume of space the size of a sugar cube. That has allowed the hottest atoms or particles to remain in their respective states.
The astronomer team spotted the unusually hot specimens some 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Gemini, in a remnant known as the Jellyfish Nebula. That prompted some rather colorful descriptions of how Suzaku's X-ray instruments teased apart X-rays by energy, not unlike how a glass prism can separate light into all the colors of the rainbow.
"Suzaku sees the Jellyfish's hot heart," said Midori Ozawa, a member of the team at Kyoto University in Japan. At least it has a heart, unlike that pitiless T Pyxidis supernova that could wipe out life on Earth millions of years from now.