Transcript Stellar Explosion has Many Layers

Stellar Explosion has
Many Layers
Oct. 26 , 2006
http://www.universetoday.com
Department of Physics
National Tsing Hua University
G.T. Chen
2006/11/06
Cassiopeia A
R.A. :23h 23m 26.7s
 Dec. :+58º 49' 03.00"
 Distance : ~11000 light years
 It is known as a supernova remnant
 SNR 111.7-2.1
 Apparent Dimension : 5 arc min
~ 10 light years
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Cassiopeia A
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It is the youngest known supernova
remnant in our Milky Way, and the
strongest extrasolar radio source in the
sky.
Calculating its expansion back,
astronomers have found that the
supernova must have blown up around
1667
The original star is about 15 to 20 times
solar mass and was made up of concentric
shells of elements
News
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From Spitzer’s observations, They have
found new bits of the ‘onion’ layers that
had not been seen before
This tells us that the star’s explosion was
not chaotic enough
It’s possible that the star exploded in a
uniform fashion, blowing its layers out in
successive order. Then those layers should
be preserved in the expanding debris
News
Spitzer’s infrared detectors were able
to observed gases and dusts
consisting of the middle-layer
elements neon, oxygen and aluminum
 It seems that most of the star’s
original layers flew outward in
successive order, but at different
average speeds depending on where
they started
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This artist's concept
illustrates that
massive star before
and after it blew up
News
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Cassiopeia A is the ideal target for
studying the anatomy of a supernova
explosion
References
http://www.universetoday.com
Oct. 26 , 2006
 http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer
 http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/0237
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>>Thank you<<
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Infrared data from the Spitzer Space
Telescope are colored red; optical
data from the Hubble Space
Telescope are yellow; and X-ray data
from the Chandra X-ray Observatory
are green and blue
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Spitzer reveals warm dust in the
outer shell with temperatures of
about 10 0C , and Hubble sees the
filamentary structures of warmer
gases about 10,000 0C . Chandra
shows hot gases at about 10 million
0C
X-ray
radio
optical
Infrared
Reference