Mark Megahan
Astronomers have known about the Pa 30 nebula since 1181, when the star at it’s core exploded. Cosmically speaking, it’s right in our own back yard, a mere 6,500 light-years from Earth. They had no idea how freaky the white dwarf’s remains really are until a 3-D data model exposed it’s unique ball of spike structure.
Zombie star nebula
Astronomers were stunned to discover the spike ball of tendrils surrounding a dead star. It wasn’t a high tech orbital telescope that produced the astounding image.
Data from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii was fed into a supercomputer. That produced “a 3-D model of those filaments and their motions through space.” Nobody ever saw anything like it before.
Astronomers call it a “zombie star.” The spiky tendrils poking out from where a white dwarf used to be are clouds of glowing hot sulfur. The substance churchgoers like to call the brimstone fumes of hell.
Skywatchers saw the star’s supernova annihilation about 900 years ago.
Not only does it have a freaky appearance, “no one knows just how that explosion formed the tendrils now surrounding the dead star.” They have a theory but it’s not their final answer by a long shot.
“It’s a piece of the puzzle towards understanding this very bizarre remnant,” astronomer Tim Cunningham relates. He likes to hang out at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
It looked weird
After the supernova was detailed by astronomers in Japan and China in 1181, it faded out of visible sight and was lost. Nobody could find a trace until it was spotted in 2013. “When they did find the remnant, it looked weird.” They didn’t know how weird until now.
“The supernova appeared to be a kind called type 1a. This type of stellar explosion involves a white dwarf star blowing up and destroying itself in the process.” This time, part of it somehow survived.
“Those tendrils,” Cunningham notes, “stretch about three light-years in all directions.” Everyone at the office was shocked. “This is really unique,” Cunningham explains. “There’s no other supernova nebula that shows filaments like this.” The system is layered like an onion.
“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.”
Their two biggest questions are how they formed and how “how those spikes have managed to stay in such straight lines for centuries.” They have one guess and aren’t real confident that it’s the right one.
“Maybe a shock wave from the explosion ricocheted off the wispy material between this star and its neighbors,” Cunningham shrugs. “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.“
