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Supernova Explosion Ripped Star’s Guts Inside Out
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A "before" artist's illustration (left) and observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (right) show how an explosion turned the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A inside out. CREDIT: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; X-ray: NASA/CXC/GSFC/U.Hwang & J.Laming |
A massive supernova explosion that destroyed a faraway star apparently turned the left over stellar corpse inside out as well, scientists say.
Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory spacecraft, a team of researchers mapped the distribution of elements in the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A for short) in unprecedented detail. They found that Cas A — which is located about 11,000 light-years from Earth and exploded 300 years ago from our perspective — is wearing its guts on the outside.
Before it went supernova, the star Cas A likely had an iron-rich core that was surrounded by layers of sulfur and silicon, which were in turn overlaid by magnesium, neon and oxygen, researchers said.
Chandra's observations showed that, after the explosion, most of that iron has now migrated to Cas A's outer edges. Neither Chandra nor NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which is optimized to see in infrared wavelengths, has detected any iron near the supernova remnant's center, where the element was originally formed.
