NASA shows image of lumpy remnant of supernova discovered in 1572

NASA has captured a new image of SN 1572, also known as the Star of Tycho, using its 20-year-old Chandra X-ray Observatory satellite. This was a supernova that had already been studied in the year 1572.

The recent NASA image is a composite, combining the data from the X-ray region with an optical image of the stars in the same field of view. The supernova remnant image, located between 8,000 to 9,800 light-years from Earth, according to a 2011 study, shows a pattern of bright bumps and clumps interspersed with much less-bright areas.

To emphasize Tycho’s clumps and three-dimensional nature, scientists have selected two narrow values ​​of X-ray energy: the red-colored silicon is moving away from Earth, and the silicon moving toward us has a blue color. The other colors represent different elements and a mixture of directions and movements.

The question is whether those clumps arose during the supernova, or because of an event that took place afterwards. According to NASA, the new image contains clues to answer this question. The image was compared with two different computer simulations, in which both scenarios were calculated. Then, a statistical analysis was used with a technique considering the number of clumps and their size. After comparing Chandra’s results with the simulated images, scientists concluded that the remnant of the Tycho supernova is very similar to the scenario where the clumps originated from the supernova. It is not known exactly how this happened, but one theory is that the clumps already formed during the explosion, perhaps because the supernova had multiple ignition points.

Understanding how these stars explode is very important, according to NASA, because it can increase the reliability of the Type 1a designation for supernovae in designating their brightness, which can determine their distance from Earth. This is very important for studying the expansion of the universe.

SN 1572 is the name of a supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia, which was discovered in 1572. In that year, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe was not the first to notice that the star was brighter in the sky than before, even brighter than Jupiter, but he did make the most accurate descriptions.

It was a Type 1a supernova, the brightest type, with the supernova radiating more than a billion times the energy of our sun. These are binary star systems in which two stars orbit each other. In a Type 1a supernova, a white dwarf eats a neighboring star, as it were. While the matter from the other star is attracted, the mass of the white dwarf increases. Once this mass gets too high, it collapses due to the enormous gravity, eventually leading to a gigantic explosion.