APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Comments and questions about the APOD on the main view screen.
Post Reply
User avatar
APOD Robot
Otto Posterman
Posts: 5344
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2009 3:27 am
Contact:

APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by APOD Robot » Sun Jan 13, 2019 5:09 am

[img]https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_190113.jpg[/img] Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray

Explanation: What star created this huge puffball? What's pictured is the hot expanding nebula of Tycho's supernova remnant, the result of a stellar explosion first recorded over 400 years ago by the famous astronomer Tycho Brahe. The featured image is a composite of three X-ray colors taken by the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory. The expanding gas cloud is extremely hot, while slightly different expansion speeds have given the cloud a puffy appearance. Although the star that created SN 1572, is likely completely gone, a star dubbed Tycho G, too dim to be discerned here, is thought to be a companion. Finding progenitor remnants of Tycho's supernova is particularly important because the supernova is of Type Ia, an important rung in the distance ladder that calibrates the scale of the visible universe. The peak brightness of Type Ia supernovas is thought to be well understood, making them quite valuable in exploring the relationship between faintness and farness in the distant universe.

<< Previous APOD This Day in APOD Next APOD >>

Alastair

Re: APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by Alastair » Sun Jan 13, 2019 6:45 am

How wide is the gas cloud and how fast is it expanding?

User avatar
Ann
4725 Å
Posts: 13369
Joined: Sat May 29, 2010 5:33 am

Re: APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by Ann » Sun Jan 13, 2019 7:44 am

See that little blue arc at about 8 o'clock? I have read somewhere that this little arc just possibly shows us where the companion of Tycho's supernova is located.

Like the caption said, astronomers have suspected that the companion survived the explosion. Tycho's supernova was a supernova type Ia, where a white dwarf accretes matter from a nearby companion, until the white dwarf gets "overloaded" and breaks through the Chandrasekhar limit, causing a runaway deflagration of the white dwarf star which explodes with a predicted luminosity. The predictability of the luminosity of supernovas type Ia makes these exploding white dwarfs particularly useful as standard candles at cosmological distances.

Wouldn't it be fun if the companion of the white dwarf that became Tycho's supernova could be found? And wouldn't it be fun if the little "blue" (really X-ray) arc could point us to where it is located?

Ann
Color Commentator

User avatar
Ann
4725 Å
Posts: 13369
Joined: Sat May 29, 2010 5:33 am

Re: APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by Ann » Sun Jan 13, 2019 7:53 am

Okay, no! I take it back!

The suspected companion is apparently located far away from the little blue arc. Well, it is fun to see a possible companion anyway.
Wikipedia wrote:

Tycho G has been proposed as the surviving binary companion star of the SN 1572 supernova event. The star is located about 12,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is a subgiant, similar to our Sun in temperature, but more evolved and luminous.
...
Tycho G is travelling away from us at nearly 80 km/s, much faster than the mean velocity of other stars in its stellar neighbourhood. It matches the properties of some models for the pre-supernova star system, although other studies exclude it.
If the star is a subgiant, it might just possibly have been a true giant before it was robbed of much of its mass by a "vampire-like", gas-sucking white dwarf companion.

Ann
Color Commentator

User avatar
JohnD
Tea Time, Guv! Cheerio!
Posts: 1578
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 2:11 pm
Location: Lancaster, England

Re: APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by JohnD » Sun Jan 13, 2019 10:28 am

Alastair asks for help to scale this, and so do I!
surfing around the subject, the Remnant is said to tbe 8-9000 light years away, and G 12000! Some companion star!
And how big is the remnant now. There is a NASA video that purports to show changes in the cloud as it continues to expand - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPG27uaJC3U, so it must be moving pretty fast, and so after 400 years could it be several hundred LY across?

Ann is the colour queen, but these are X-ray frequencies. There's a video in the Wiki page linked to from the blurb (Tycho's supernova remnant) that breaks down the three frequencies used.
John

De58te
Commander
Posts: 583
Joined: Mon Sep 30, 2013 6:35 pm

Re: APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by De58te » Sun Jan 13, 2019 11:14 am

Alastair wrote: Sun Jan 13, 2019 6:45 am How wide is the gas cloud and how fast is it expanding?
"We found that expansion velocities measured for Kα emission of Si, 4700 ± 100 km s−1, are clearly higher than that measured for Fe Kα, 4000 ± 300 km s−1. Combining the obtained expansion velocity with the proper-motion measurement by Chandra, the distance to Tycho's SNR is estimated to be 4 ± 1 kpc." -- http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.10 ... 1/894/meta

User avatar
JohnD
Tea Time, Guv! Cheerio!
Posts: 1578
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 2:11 pm
Location: Lancaster, England

Re: APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by JohnD » Sun Jan 13, 2019 11:29 am

4 kpc (?kiloparsecs?) =13,000 light years. But there as 25% error range in that.
And 1kpc is 3261LYs, so 10,000 to 16,000LYs!

I thought that Type Ia supernovas were an accurate distance marker?

John

User avatar
Ann
4725 Å
Posts: 13369
Joined: Sat May 29, 2010 5:33 am

Re: APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by Ann » Sun Jan 13, 2019 11:49 am

JohnD wrote: Sun Jan 13, 2019 11:29 am 4 kpc (?kiloparsecs?) =13,000 light years. But there as 25% error range in that.
And 1kpc is 3261LYs, so 10,000 to 16,000LYs!

I thought that Type Ia supernovas were an accurate distance marker?

John
The way I understand it, it is the light curve of the supernova type Ia itself that is the distance marker, not the supernova remnant.

Ann
Color Commentator

User avatar
JohnD
Tea Time, Guv! Cheerio!
Posts: 1578
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2005 2:11 pm
Location: Lancaster, England

Re: APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by JohnD » Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:11 pm

Don't understand how that can be, Ann.
The way the luminosity fades will be the same however far away it is.
But as a "standard candle", an SN that appears to have brightness of 1, while one that is twice as far away will have a brightness of 1/SQR(2)?


John

User avatar
Ann
4725 Å
Posts: 13369
Joined: Sat May 29, 2010 5:33 am

Re: APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by Ann » Sun Jan 13, 2019 2:21 pm

JohnD wrote: Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:11 pm Don't understand how that can be, Ann.
The way the luminosity fades will be the same however far away it is.
But as a "standard candle", an SN that appears to have brightness of 1, while one that is twice as far away will have a brightness of 1/SQR(2)?


John
Well, the way I understand it, we are dependent on Tycho's observations in 1572 and 1573 to estimate the distance to the supernova. I guess that, as reliable as Tycho was for his time, his observations still weren't as good as modern observations. That's where the uncertainties come from.

But Gaia should hopefully settle this uncertainty once and for all. If nothing else, Gaia should defintely be able to pin down the distance to the supernova's possible companion, Tycho G.

Ann
Color Commentator

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

Re: APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by neufer » Sun Jan 13, 2019 4:15 pm

JohnD wrote: Sun Jan 13, 2019 12:11 pm
The way the luminosity fades will be the same however far away it is.
Yes, but Ann has demonstrated that the way the luminosity fades will determine how bright the supernova was when it peaked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1572 wrote:
<<Tycho's supernova was classified as type I on the basis of its historical light curve soon after type I and type II supernovae were first defined on the basis of their spectra. The X-ray spectrum of the remnant showed that it was almost certainly of type Ia, but its exact classification continued to be debated until the detection of a light echo in 2008 gave final confirmation that it is a normal type Ia.

The classification as a type Ia supernova of normal luminosity allows an accurate measure of the distance to SN 1572. The peak absolute magnitude can be calculated from the B-band decline rate to be −19.0±0.3. Given estimates of the peak apparent magnitude and the known extinction of 1.86±0.2 magnitudes, the distance is 3.8+1.5−0.9 kpc.

The distance to the supernova remnant has been estimated to between 2 and 5 kpc (approx. 6,500 and 16,300 light-years), but recent studies suggest a value closer to 2.5 and 3 kpc (approx. 8,000 and 9,800 light-years).>>
Art Neuendorffer

starsurfer
Stellar Cartographer
Posts: 5306
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2012 7:25 pm

Re: APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by starsurfer » Sun Jan 13, 2019 5:17 pm

This SNR is ridiculously faint in the optical.

User avatar
Ann
4725 Å
Posts: 13369
Joined: Sat May 29, 2010 5:33 am

Re: APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by Ann » Sun Jan 13, 2019 6:04 pm

starsurfer wrote: Sun Jan 13, 2019 5:17 pm This SNR is ridiculously faint in the optical.
I can see a little red arc in there. Would that be the same as the "blue" X-ray arc in today's APOD?

Ann
Color Commentator

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

Tycho's Supernova Remnant in the Infrared

Post by neufer » Sun Jan 13, 2019 7:27 pm

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/gallery/pia13119.html wrote:
<<This image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) takes in several interesting objects in the constellation Cassiopeia, none of which are easily seen in visible light. The red circle visible in the upper left part of the image is SN 1572, often called "Tycho's Supernova." This remnant of a star explosion is named after the astronomer Tycho Brahe, although he was not the only person to observe and record the supernova. When the supernova first appeared in November 1572, it was as bright as Venus and could be seen in the daytime. Over the next two years, the supernova dimmed until it could no longer be seen with the naked eye. It wasn't until the 1950s that the remnants of the supernova could be seen again with the help of telescopes.

When the star exploded, it sent out a blast wave into the surrounding material, scooping up interstellar dust and gas as it went, like a snow plow. An expanding shock wave traveled into the surroundings and a reverse shock was driven back in toward the remnants of the star. Previous observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope indicate that the nature of the light that WISE sees from the supernova remnant is emission from dust heated by the shock wave.

In the center of the image is a star-forming nebula of dust and gas, called S175. This cloud of material is about 3,500 light-years away and 35 light-years across. It is being heated by radiation from young, hot stars within it, and the dust within the cloud radiates infrared light. On the left edge of the image, between the Tycho supernova remnant and the very bright star, is an open cluster of stars, King 1, first catalogued by Ivan King, an astronomer at UC Berkeley, Calif. This cluster is about 6,000 light-years away, 4 light-years across and is about 2 billion years old.

Also of interest in the lower right of the image is a cluster of infrared-emitting objects. Almost all of these sources have no counterparts in visible-light images, and only some have been catalogued by previous infrared surveys. There are indications that they may be young stellar objects associated with a dense nebula in the area. Young stellar objects (YSOs) are stars in their earliest stages of life. YSOs are surrounded by an envelope of dust, which would explain the very red color of the sources in this image.

All four infrared detectors aboard WISE were used to make this mosaic. The image spans an area of 1.6 x 1.6 degrees on the sky or about 3 times as wide and high as the full moon. Color is representational: blue and cyan represent infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is dominated by light from stars. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is mostly light from warm dust.>>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1572#In_literature wrote:
<<In the ninth episode of James Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus associates the appearance of the supernova with the youthful William Shakespeare, and in the November 1998 issue of Sky & Telescope, three researchers from Southwest Texas State University, Don Olson and Russell Doescher of the Physics Department and Marilynn Olson of the English Department, argued that this supernova is described in Shakespeare's Hamlet, specifically by Bernardo in Act I, Scene i.>>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
  • JOYCE: Ulysses, Scylla & Charybdis

STEPHEN: (Stringendo) He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William,
  • in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy
    set his face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the
    sonnets where there is Wil{L IN OVER}plus. Like John o’Gaunt his name
    is dear to him, as dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend
    sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer
    than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country. What’s in a
    name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name
    that we are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a firedrake, rose at his
    birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter than Venus in the
    night, and by night it shone over delta in Cassiopeia, the recumbent
    constellation which is the signature of his initial among the stars.
    His eyes watched it, lowlying on the horizon, eastward of the bear,
    as he walked by the slumberous summer fields at midnight returning
    from Shottery and from her arms.
Both satisfied. I too.

Don’t tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched.

And from her arms.

Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you?

Read the skies. Autontimorumenos. Bous Stephanoumenos. Where’s your
configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D: sua donna.
Già: di lui. Gelindo risolve di non amare S. D.

—What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a
celestial phenomenon?


—A star by night, Stephen said. A pillar of the cloud by day.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
THE Tragicall Historie of HAMLET Prince of Denmarke
  • By William Shake-speare (Quarto 1, 1603).

    First Scene:
As it hath beene diuerse times acted by his Highnesse ser-
uants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two V-
niuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and else-where
At London printed for N.L. and Iohn Trundell. 1603.

Barnardo: Sit downe I pray, and let vs once againe
  • Assaile your eares that are so fortified,
    What we haue two nights seene.

Horatio: Wel, sit we downe, and let vs heare Bernardo speake of this.

Barnardo: Last night of al, when yonder starre that's west-
  • ward from the pole, had made his course to
    Illumine that part of heauen. Where now it burnes,
    The bell then towling one.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
  • Last Scene:
Enter Fortenbrasse, Drumme and Souldiers.

Fortenbrasse: Captaine, from vs goe greete The king of Denmarke:
  • Tell him that For[T]enbrasse nephew to old Norwa[Y],
    Craues a free passe and condu[Y]t ouer his land,
    According to t[H]e Articles agreed on:
    You know [O]ur Randevous, goe march away.

Code: Select all

  T e l l h i m t h a t F o r [T] e n b r a s s e n e
  p h e w t o o l d N o r w a [Y],C r a u e s a f r e
  e p a s s e a n d c o n d u [C] t o u e r h i s l a
  n d,A c c o r d i n g t o t [H] e A r t i c l e s a
  g r e e d o n:Y o u k n o w [O] u r R a n d e v o u
  s,g o e m a r c h a w a y.

[TYCHO] ELS skip 25
Art Neuendorffer

User avatar
Fred the Cat
Theoretic Apothekitty
Posts: 958
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2016 4:09 pm
AKA: Ron
Location: Eagle, Idaho

Re: APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by Fred the Cat » Sun Jan 13, 2019 11:32 pm

The fluffy outer appearance of Tycho's early days resembles his most famous namesake :content: Along with the rest of us. :thumb_up:

That too takes two to tango. :wink:
Freddy's Felicity "Only ascertain as a cat box survivor"

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

Re: APOD: Tycho's Supernova Remnant in X-ray (2019 Jan 13)

Post by neufer » Mon Jan 14, 2019 2:25 am

Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Fred the Cat wrote: Sun Jan 13, 2019 11:32 pm
The fluffy outer appearance of Tycho's early days resembles his most famous namesake :content:
  • It takes a villus.
Art Neuendorffer

Post Reply