[ad_1]
The most important supernova of the modern era is perhaps SN 1987A, the supernova closest to Earth since the invention of the telescope. Scientists observe the remains of the explosion since the events of 1987.
Scientists led by Yvette Cendes, a graduate student at the University of Toronto, presented a new report showing 25 years of radio-wave observations of the evolution of the stellar body from 1992 to 2017. You can look at these observations in the timelapse below.
The gif shows the radio flux after an end-of-life star has collapsed on itself, ejecting material and energy. Fewer radio waves are represented in blue, more radio waves in red and most in white. We will arrive at what emits these waves in a moment.
The SN 1987A was the closest supernova to the Earth from the "Kepler supernova", observed around the world in 1604. It occurred 168,000 light-years apart in the Great Magellanic Cloud, and its remains have been studied extensively for a star dies and how supernovae evolve. It was also the first example of "multimessenger astronomy", in which scientists detected both light and other emitted particles, as it contained some detectable neutrino particles.
Scientists took these images of the remaining radio waves using the Australia Telescope Compact Array and published them yesterday in the Astrophysical Journal. Their observations show that remnants of the supernova continue to expand and have recently begun to fade in the southeastern part. In addition, they found that its expansion has accelerated over the past three years.
You will notice the shape of the ring in the first images: it is a material ejected by the star before the supernova. The shock ring of the supernova went through the ring, causing a spiral of electrons due to changes in the magnetic field and the release of photons.
Scientists behind the new paper believe that accelerated expansion could be a sign that the shockwave is starting to leave the ring, which would explain the attenuation of the brightness in the southeastern part.
"The reason it's more interesting now is that it looks like a shockwave that has gone through this dense material in the ring surrounding the supernova and has now accelerated as it's". it goes into a less dense environment, "said Cendes. "It's very cool, the clbadic physics of shockwaves."
This is not the only telescope or large dataset that observes the behavior – Hubble, the Chandra X-ray telescope and many others periodically check this supernova to see how things are going. Other observations in other wavelengths of light confirm the observations presented here.
It's rare for you to see an astronomical event happen in real time (168,000 years behind schedule, but you know what I mean). And you can bet that scientists will continue to study the bullshit of this supernova to try to understand these chaotic events more generally.
[ApJ]Source link
