NASA telescopes start the year strong

A colorful and festive image shows different types of light containing the remains of not one, but at least two exploded stars. This supernova remnant is known as 30 Doradus B (30 Dor B for short) and is part of a larger region of space where stars have been continuously forming for 8 to 10 million years. It is a complex landscape of dark gas clouds, young stars, high-energy shocks and superheated gas, located 160,000 light years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

The new image of 30 Dor B was made by combining radiological data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple), optical data from the 4-meter Blanco telescope in Chile (orange and cyan), and infrared data of NASA’s Spitzer space. Telescope (red). Optical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has also been added in black and white to highlight the sharp features of the image.

A team of astronomers led by Wei-An Chen of National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan, used more than two million seconds of Chandra observation time from 30 Dor B and its surroundings to analyze the region . They discovered a faint X-ray layer that extends about 130 light years. (For context, the closest star to the sun is about four light years away). The Chandra data also reveals that 30 Dor B contains particle winds blown by a pulsar, creating what is known as a pulsar wind nebula.

The article led by Wei-An Chen describing these results was recently published in the Astronomical Journal. Co-authors of the paper are Chuan-Jui Li, You-Hua Chu, Shutaro Ueda, Kuo-Song Wang, Sheng-Yuan Liu, all of the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics; Academia Sinica, in Taipei, Taiwan, and Bo-An Chen of National Taiwan University.

By combining Chandra’s data with those from Hubble and other telescopes, the researchers determined that no supernova explosion could explain what was observed. The pulsar and bright X-rays seen at the center of 30 Dor B likely resulted from a supernova explosion after the collapse of a massive star about 5,000 years ago. The larger, fainter X-ray envelope, however, is too large to come from the same supernova.

Instead, the team believes that at least two supernova explosions took place in 30 Dor B, with the X-ray shell produced by another supernova more than 5,000 years ago. It is also quite possible that other events have occurred in the past.

This result can help astronomers learn more about the lives of massive stars and the effects of their supernova explosions.