Detective astronomers unearth hidden celestial gem
| Supernova remnant G350.1-0.3 and its neutron star (Picture: ESA). |
10.06.2008
ESA’s orbiting X-ray observatory XMM-Newton has re-discovered an ignored celestial gem. The object in question is one of the youngest and brightest supernova remnants in the Milky Way, the corpse of a star that exploded around 1000 years ago.
Its shape, age and chemical composition will allow astronomers to better understand the violent ways in which stars end their lives.
Exploding stars seed the Universe with heavy chemical elements necessary to build planets and create life. The expanding cloud of debris that each explosion leaves behind, known as a supernova remnant (SNR), is a bright source of X-rays and radio waves. Generally, the debris is thought to appear as an expanding bubble or ring.
When astronomers took the first high-resolution radio images of a celestial object known as ‘G350.1-0.3’ in the 1980s, they saw an irregular knot of gases that did not seem to meet these expectations. So it was classified as a probable background galaxy and was quietly forgotten.
Read more from ESA´s webpage.
