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In the year 1181 AD, a new luminous point as bright as the planet Saturn appeared to Chinese and Japanese skygazers for just over six months before disappearing. Hundreds of years later, researchers believe they have finally found the source of this mysterious occurrence.
The event, as the famous Crab Nebula-forming the stellar explosion of 1054, is one of the few nearby bright lightnings noted in historical records, but unlike the Crab Nebula, the spectacle of 1181 was elusive.
The historical record leaves some clues that have been useful to modern astronomers. First, the timing: this “guest star” shone for 185 days, from August 6, 1181 to February 6, 1182. The record also indicates its place in the sky, which was a point between two Chinese constellations, Chuanshe and Huagai, near the modern Cassiopeia.
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These cosmic puzzle pieces led a research team to the likely culprit behind the Old Flash: a supernova whose remains now form a rapid expansion nebula called Pa30. The nebula’s clouds are moving so quickly that, in the new research, scientists from Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Spain, Hungary and France have found that the dust and gas of Pa30 can travel through the distance from Earth to the Moon in five minutes. Using this speed and calculating backwards, the researchers determined that the nebula would be suitable for a supernova that exploded around 1181.
The team found that Pa30 had formed from a rare and relatively weak type of supernova called an “Iax-type supernova.” “Only about 10% of supernovae are of this type and they are not well understood. The fact that SN1181 was weak but faded very slowly matches this type,” said Albert Zijlstra, astrophysicist at the University of Manchester. in the United Kingdom, in a declaration on the new research.
Scientists have also discovered that Parker’s Star, one of the hottest stars in Milky Way, is also a probable counterpart of the supernova. The nebula and star are believed to be the result of a massive collision and subsequent fusion of two dark stellar corpses known as the white dwarfs.
“It is the only Iax-type supernova where detailed studies of the remaining star and nebula are possible,” Ziljlstra added. “It’s nice to be able to solve both a historical mystery and an astronomical mystery.”
The to study was published Wednesday (September 15) in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Follow Doris Elin Urrutia on Twitter @salazar_elin. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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