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Top Comments: And Now for Something Completely Different--A Supernova Remnant with Tendrils [1]
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Date: 2025-01-26
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In 1181, Asian astronomers noted a “guest star,” a phenomenon we now identify as a supernova. It took until 2013, but modern astronomers identified the remnants of this supernova, now called the Pa 30 nebula. The supernova appeared to have been of the type 1a variety, involving the explosion of a white dwarf star. However, the remains of the supernova has utterly unique aspects. First, the star was not entirely destroyed in the supernova, and second, the remnant is surrounded by filaments that project out three lightyears from what remains of the star.
The system is structured “kind of like a three-layered onion,” Cunningham says. The inner layer is the star. Then there’s a gap of one or two light-years, which ends in a spherical shell of dust. The final layer is the filaments, which emerge from the dust shell. How the filaments formed remains a mystery. Also unclear is how those spikes have managed to stay in such straight lines for centuries. Maybe a shock wave from the explosion ricocheted off the wispy material between this star and its neighbors. As the shock wave bounced back toward the white dwarf, it could have sculpted the material into the spikes astronomers see. But future studies will have to confirm or rule out that scenario.
Note that the figure above is an illustration, not a photograph, but it’s mindboggling to me that there’s something out in space that looks vaguely like a sea urchin. I will be curious to see how astrophysicists explain this one.
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