APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Comments and questions about the APOD on the main view screen.
User avatar
APOD Robot
Otto Posterman
Posts: 5610
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2009 3:27 am

APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by APOD Robot » Tue Oct 09, 2012 4:06 am

Image Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant

Explanation: It's easy to get lost following the intricate filaments in this detailed mosaic image of faint supernova remnant Simeis 147 (S147). Also cataloged as Sh2-240, it covers nearly 3 degrees or 6 full moons on the sky. That's about 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud's estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. Anchoring the frame at the right, bright star Elnath (Beta Tauri) is seen towards the boundary of the constellations Taurus and Auriga, almost exactly opposite the galactic center in planet Earth's sky. This sharp composite includes image data taken through a narrow-band filter to highlight emission from hydrogen atoms tracing the shocked, glowing gas. The supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years, meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 40,000 years ago. But the expanding remnant is not the only aftermath. The cosmic catastrophe also left behind a spinning neutron star or pulsar, all that remains of the original star's core.

<< Previous APOD This Day in APOD Next APOD >>
[/b]

Bugwriter

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by Bugwriter » Tue Oct 09, 2012 4:43 am

The supernova remnant is 40,000 years old and light from it first reached earth 40,000 years ago? I would think every astronomer on the planet would be studying that object. ;-)

User avatar
Chris Peterson
Abominable Snowman
Posts: 18623
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2007 11:13 pm
Location: Guffey, Colorado, USA

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by Chris Peterson » Tue Oct 09, 2012 4:46 am

Bugwriter wrote:The supernova remnant is 40,000 years old and light from it first reached earth 40,000 years ago? I would think every astronomer on the planet would be studying that object. ;-)
The light from the remnant didn't reach the Earth 40,000 years ago... it reached the Earth when this image was taken. The light from the supernova itself reached the Earth 40,000 years ago. The remnant has been evolving over the last 40,000 years.
Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
https://www.cloudbait.com

User avatar
Ann
4725 Å
Posts: 13877
Joined: Sat May 29, 2010 5:33 am

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by Ann » Tue Oct 09, 2012 5:16 am

It's a lovely image, and Rogelio Bernal Andreo is one of the true heroes of astrophotography! :-D :clap: :-D

Ann
Color Commentator

starsurfer
Stellar Cartographer
Posts: 5409
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2012 7:25 pm

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by starsurfer » Tue Oct 09, 2012 6:52 am

Spectacular image of what is surely a very faint supernova remnant! :D As well as Ha, it also contains a lot of OIII emission and there are very few images that include exposures in this waveband. :(

Jim Kinnaird
Asternaut
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2012 6:58 am

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by Jim Kinnaird » Tue Oct 09, 2012 7:06 am

If the supernova happened 40,000 years ago and light takes 3,000 years to get from there to here, we're seeing what the remnant looked like after 37,000 years of evolution.

User avatar
ritwik
Science Officer
Posts: 104
Joined: Mon Feb 20, 2012 12:53 pm

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by ritwik » Tue Oct 09, 2012 8:56 am

supernova : they are the beautiful reminder that nothing last forever

http://dotsub.com/view/9063c8e8-e2f7-43 ... 3bbb204890

User avatar
neufer
Vacationer at Tralfamadore
Posts: 18805
Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2008 1:57 pm
Location: Alexandria, Virginia

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by neufer » Tue Oct 09, 2012 10:16 am

ritwik wrote:
supernova : they are the beautiful reminder that nothing last forever

http://dotsub.com/view/9063c8e8-e2f7-43 ... 3bbb204890
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 02#p185202


Art (Definitely NOT nothing) Neuendorffer (for E.Ver)

User avatar
neufer
Vacationer at Tralfamadore
Posts: 18805
Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2008 1:57 pm
Location: Alexandria, Virginia

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by neufer » Tue Oct 09, 2012 10:20 am

Jim Kinnaird wrote:
If the supernova happened 40,000 years ago and light takes 3,000 years to get from there to here, we're seeing what the remnant looked like after 37,000 years of evolution.
A "happening" is an earth event.

The Kepler supernova "happened" in 1604 so far as we are concerned.

The supernova remnant has been observed on earth for 40,000 years of devolution.
Art Neuendorffer

User avatar
neufer
Vacationer at Tralfamadore
Posts: 18805
Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2008 1:57 pm
Location: Alexandria, Virginia

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by neufer » Tue Oct 09, 2012 10:41 am

starsurfer wrote:
Spectacular image of what is surely a very faint supernova remnant! :D As well as Ha, it also contains a lot of OIII emission and there are very few images that include exposures in this waveband. :(
OIII emission is generally the result of ultraviolet irradiation from a white dwarf CS.

This has just a neutron CS :!:

The only narrowband data was H-Alpha:
http://blog.deepskycolors.com/archive/2011/12/08/simeis-147-and-surroundings.html wrote:
<<Successfully combining narrowband data (H-Alpha in this case) and (L)RGB data can be tricky. One of the usual results is that, since H-Alpha data tends to produce very small stars, when combined with broadband data, the resulting image often presents a rather severe ringing around the stars. Also, some conventional techniques rely on mixing H-Alpha with the red (R) and blue (B) data, but in this case, my RGB data was rather poor so I couldn't rely on just this technique. Therefore, for this particular image I followed a number of conventional as well as non-conventional methods that proved to be rather successful in producing an image that visually documents this area of the sky. Also, as usual in many of my recent images, a multi-scale approach dominated post-processing, in particular to bring out the fainter details that hide behind the swarm of stars.>>
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap050324.html wrote:
<<It's easy to get lost following the intricate filaments in this detailed image of faint supernova remnant Simeis 147. Seen towards the constellation Taurus it covers nearly 3 degrees (6 full moons) on the sky corresponding to a width of 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud's estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. The color composite image includes eight hours of exposure time with an H-alpha filter, transmiting only the light from recombining hydrogen atoms in the expanding nebulosity and tracing the regions of shocked, glowing gas. This supernova remnant has an apparent age of about 100,000 years - meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 100,000 years ago - but this expanding remnant is not the only aftermath. The cosmic catastrophe also left behind a spinning neutron star or pulsar, all that remains of the original star's core.>>
Last edited by neufer on Tue Oct 09, 2012 2:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Art Neuendorffer

casus b

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by casus b » Tue Oct 09, 2012 1:07 pm

If it doesn't have a name yet, I nominate the "Rose".

NGC3314
Telescope Nerd
Posts: 126
Joined: Thu Sep 23, 2010 5:15 pm

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by NGC3314 » Tue Oct 09, 2012 1:14 pm

Like may supernova remnants in its age range, Simeis 147 does have reasonably strong [O III] emission (I found a paper in a Soviet journal from the 1970s quoting ratios of 2.0-4.6 relative to the strength of H-beta). As well as by reprocessing deep UV, these transitions can also be powered by rapid shocks in the interstellar medium, which supernova remnants can do for a long time. Multifilter images of such SNRs as the Cygnus Loop show how the ionization state can change on very fine scales as shocks encounter denser clouds and are redirected (sometimes wrapping around them).

User avatar
Anthony Barreiro
Turtles all the way down
Posts: 793
Joined: Wed May 11, 2011 7:09 pm
Location: San Francisco, California, Turtle Island

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by Anthony Barreiro » Tue Oct 09, 2012 5:16 pm

This is a beautiful picture! I love how the supernova remnant appears to hang in space, very three dimensional. It makes me imagine being on the bridge of a starship exploring the galactic neighborhood.

I've never observed this object myself, although being so close to Beta Tauri it's pretty easy to find! A quick internet search led to this interesting report and drawing from Rich Jakiel. If you mouse over the drawing, you'll see a corresponding ccd photo. Rich used a high-quality 20-inch f-3.9 telescope and, interestingly, an O-III filter, and reports a limiting visual magnitude of 6.5. So I'm probably not going to see this one from the back yard with my 5-inch schmidt cassegrain.
May all beings be happy, peaceful, and free.

KimM

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by KimM » Tue Oct 09, 2012 5:57 pm

"The supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years, meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 40,000 years ago." --APOD

Incorrect. If the supernova remnant was created approximately 40,000 years ago and it is 3,000 light years away, then what we are observing today is 37, 000 years old. Be careful with the units. :)

User avatar
Chris Peterson
Abominable Snowman
Posts: 18623
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2007 11:13 pm
Location: Guffey, Colorado, USA

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by Chris Peterson » Tue Oct 09, 2012 6:35 pm

KimM wrote:"The supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years, meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 40,000 years ago." --APOD

Incorrect. If the supernova remnant was created approximately 40,000 years ago and it is 3,000 light years away, then what we are observing today is 37, 000 years old. Be careful with the units. :)
Incorrect. It doesn't matter how far away the object is. In most cases (including this one) astronomers and physicists are only interested in when the observation is made. When it "really" happened doesn't matter in the slightest. The caption is correct as written.
Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
https://www.cloudbait.com

Dave1234

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by Dave1234 » Tue Oct 09, 2012 8:29 pm

What is the small nebula just to the left of Simeis 147? And do I see an even smaller red nebula to its left? Perhaps it should be called Siphonaptera. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Siphonaptera

Boomer12k
:---[===] *
Posts: 2691
Joined: Sun Apr 22, 2007 12:07 am

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by Boomer12k » Tue Oct 09, 2012 9:10 pm

casus b wrote:If it doesn't have a name yet, I nominate the "Rose".
Unfortunately, it has a name....The Spaghetti Nebula. YUMMY!!! :D

If you want to see other interesting shots you find on Apod. In you search engine websearch......Images of (Blank), and fill in the blank. Lots of other interesting shots of this nebula.

:---[===] *

User avatar
BMAONE23
Commentator Model 1.23
Posts: 4076
Joined: Wed Feb 23, 2005 6:55 pm
Location: California

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by BMAONE23 » Tue Oct 09, 2012 9:24 pm

Dave1234 wrote:What is the small nebula just to the left of Simeis 147? And do I see an even smaller red nebula to its left? Perhaps it should be called Siphonaptera. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Siphonaptera
The larger/brighter of the two to the left is LBN 827 (Lynds Bright Nebula)

Looking at Google Sky, it appears at RA 5H51M54.89S DEC 27d01'28.96"

User avatar
bystander
Apathetic Retiree
Posts: 21593
Joined: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:06 pm
Location: Oklahoma

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by bystander » Tue Oct 09, 2012 11:02 pm

BMAONE23 wrote:The larger/brighter of the two to the left is LBN 827 (Lynds Bright Nebula)

Looking at Google Sky, it appears at RA 5H51M54.89S DEC 27d01'28.96"
I've seen the larger labeled as LBN 826 and the smaller as LBN 827.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hiroc/6930595750/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hiroc/6930606968/
Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk.
— Garrison Keillor

saturno2
Commander
Posts: 763
Joined: Wed Jun 29, 2011 10:05 pm

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by saturno2 » Tue Oct 09, 2012 11:18 pm

Beautiful image
Supernova
The beautiful visible Universe

PhilT

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by PhilT » Wed Oct 10, 2012 11:07 am

Never ceases to amaze me, we all loosely throw out numbers like "150 light years across"..... but I wonder if we really get how enormously big that is compared to little old us.

The biggest thing we can get our heads around is probably the Solar system - which is about 1/700th of a light year across. Therefore taking ~1/2 day for light to travel from one side to the other.

Put in another perspective, one could fit 105,000 (150x700) Solar systems end to end from one side of this Supernova remnant to the other.

User avatar
neufer
Vacationer at Tralfamadore
Posts: 18805
Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2008 1:57 pm
Location: Alexandria, Virginia

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by neufer » Wed Oct 10, 2012 12:04 pm

PhilT wrote:
Never ceases to amaze me, we all loosely throw out numbers like "150 light years across"..... but I wonder if we really get how enormously big that is compared to little old us.
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 62#p185242
Art Neuendorffer

User avatar
BMAONE23
Commentator Model 1.23
Posts: 4076
Joined: Wed Feb 23, 2005 6:55 pm
Location: California

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by BMAONE23 » Wed Oct 10, 2012 1:56 pm

bystander wrote:
BMAONE23 wrote:The larger/brighter of the two to the left is LBN 827 (Lynds Bright Nebula)

Looking at Google Sky, it appears at RA 5H51M54.89S DEC 27d01'28.96"
I've seen the larger labeled as LBN 826 and the smaller as LBN 827.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hiroc/6930595750/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hiroc/6930606968/
This is interesting...The LBN database lists LBN 827 as visually larger than LBN 826 http://www.atscope.com.au/database/lbn.txt

The catalog lists LBN 826 with a dimension of 7 x 7 arcmin with an area of 0.011(degree^2)
It also lists LBN 827 with a dimension of 10 x 10 arcmin with an area of 0.014 (degree^2)

starsurfer
Stellar Cartographer
Posts: 5409
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2012 7:25 pm

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by starsurfer » Wed Oct 10, 2012 2:42 pm

neufer wrote:
starsurfer wrote:
Spectacular image of what is surely a very faint supernova remnant! :D As well as Ha, it also contains a lot of OIII emission and there are very few images that include exposures in this waveband. :(
OIII emission is generally the result of ultraviolet irradiation from a white dwarf CS.

This has just a neutron CS :!:

The only narrowband data was H-Alpha:
http://blog.deepskycolors.com/archive/2011/12/08/simeis-147-and-surroundings.html wrote:
<<Successfully combining narrowband data (H-Alpha in this case) and (L)RGB data can be tricky. One of the usual results is that, since H-Alpha data tends to produce very small stars, when combined with broadband data, the resulting image often presents a rather severe ringing around the stars. Also, some conventional techniques rely on mixing H-Alpha with the red (R) and blue (B) data, but in this case, my RGB data was rather poor so I couldn't rely on just this technique. Therefore, for this particular image I followed a number of conventional as well as non-conventional methods that proved to be rather successful in producing an image that visually documents this area of the sky. Also, as usual in many of my recent images, a multi-scale approach dominated post-processing, in particular to bring out the fainter details that hide behind the swarm of stars.>>
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap050324.html wrote:
<<It's easy to get lost following the intricate filaments in this detailed image of faint supernova remnant Simeis 147. Seen towards the constellation Taurus it covers nearly 3 degrees (6 full moons) on the sky corresponding to a width of 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud's estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. The color composite image includes eight hours of exposure time with an H-alpha filter, transmiting only the light from recombining hydrogen atoms in the expanding nebulosity and tracing the regions of shocked, glowing gas. This supernova remnant has an apparent age of about 100,000 years - meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 100,000 years ago - but this expanding remnant is not the only aftermath. The cosmic catastrophe also left behind a spinning neutron star or pulsar, all that remains of the original star's core.>>
I didn't say that the image included OIII exposures, I was merely stating that this particular remnant also includes OIII, which is rarely seen as nearly all images are Ha only. You're wrong when you say that OIII is only the result of the effects of a white dwarf. Many supernova remnants and Wolf Rayet nebulae, which don't feature a white dwarf exhibit bright OIII emission. Visual OIII emission can arise from oxygen gas receiving enough energy to be ionized, which usually requires more energy to be ionized than hydrogen. The OIII in supernova remnants is usually due to the intense high energies created by the shockwave of the gas colliding with the ISM. Another interesting thing is that OIII emission is more susceptible to dust extinction than hydrogen-alpha.
You can see a comparison of Ha and OIII in Simeis 147 in this image by Stephane Zoll: http://www.astrosurf.com/zoll/images/SH2_240_HvsO.jpg

User avatar
Chris Peterson
Abominable Snowman
Posts: 18623
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2007 11:13 pm
Location: Guffey, Colorado, USA

Re: APOD: Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant (2012 Oct 09)

Post by Chris Peterson » Wed Oct 10, 2012 3:07 pm

PhilT wrote:Never ceases to amaze me, we all loosely throw out numbers like "150 light years across"..... but I wonder if we really get how enormously big that is compared to little old us.
Personally, I have no problem at all visualizing 150 light years. These are the sort of units I work with all the time, and consequently they seem very natural to me. I don't think that people have any inherent difficulty dealing with scales outside our daily experience, it's just a question of familiarity.
Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
https://www.cloudbait.com