New data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has provided stringent constraints on the environment around one of the closest supernovas discovered in decades. The Chandra results provide insight into possible cause of the explosion, as described in our press release.
On January 21, 2014, astronomers witnessed a supernova soon after it exploded in the Messier 82, or M82, galaxy. Telescopes across the globe and in space turned their attention to study this newly exploded star, including Chandra. Astronomers determined that this supernova, dubbed SN 2014J, belongs to a class of explosions called "Type Ia" supernovas. These supernovas are used as cosmic distance-markers and played a key role in the discovery of the Universe's accelerated expansion, which has been attributed to the effects of dark energy. Scientists think that all Type Ia supernovas involve the detonation of a white dwarf. One important question is whether the fuse on the explosion is lit when the white dwarf pulls too much material from a companion star like the Sun, or when two white dwarf stars merge. This image contains Chandra data, where low, medium, and high-energy X- rays are red, green, and blue respectively. The boxes in the bottom of the image show close-up views of the region around the supernova in data taken prior to the explosion (left), as well as data gathered on February 3, 2014, after the supernova went off (right). The lack of X-rays detected by Chandra is an important clue for astronomers looking for the exact mechanism of how this star exploded.
The non-detection of X-rays reveals that the region around the site of the supernova explosion is relatively devoid of material. Astronomers expect that if a white dwarf exploded because it had been steadily collecting matter from a companion star prior to exploding, the mass transfer process would not be 100% efficient, and the white dwarf would be immersed in a cloud of gas. If a significant amount of material were surrounding the doomed star, the blast wave generated by the supernova would have struck it by the time of the Chandra observation, producing a bright X-ray source. Since they do not detect any X-rays, the researchers determined that the region around SN 2014J is exceptionally clean.
A viable candidate for the cause of SN 2014J must explain the relatively gas-free environment around the star prior to the explosion. One possibility is the merger of two white dwarf stars, in which case there might have been little mass transfer and pollution of the environment before the explosion. Another is that several smaller eruptions on the surface of the white dwarf cleared the region prior to the supernova. Further observations a few hundred days after the explosion could shed light on the amount of gas in a larger volume, and help decide between these and other scenarios.
A paper describing these results was published in the July 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal and is available online. The first author is Raffaella Margutti from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, MA, and the co-authors are Jerod Parrent (CfA), Atish Kamble (CfA), Alicia Soderberg (CfA), Ryan Foley (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Dan Milisavljevic (CfA), Maria Drout (CfA), and Robert Kirshner (CfA).
Chandra X-ray Observatory data gives insight into the explosion that produced SN 2014J, one of the closest supernovas discovered in decades, located in the M82 galaxy. SN 2014J is a Type Ia supernova, an important class that astronomers use to measure the expansion of the Universe. This image features M82 as the main part, with the low, medium, and high-energy X-rays that Chandra can detect in red, green, and blue respectively. There is a tiny box just to the left of center in M82. Two boxes in the bottom of the image show close-up views of that region around the supernova in data taken prior to the explosion (left), as well as data gathered about three weeks after the supernova went off (right). The images are mostly dark with just a bit of patchy brown-ish emission around the left sides. This lack of X-rays detected by Chandra of the event rules out one mechanism that scientists theorized could cause the star to explode. The striking X-ray image of the starburst galaxy M82 itself features an intense, glowing and nebulous object sprinkled liberally across with smaller, fainter dots of light. The image is almost smooth and shiny in appearance, reminiscent of light from a polished gemstone. The colors of the bright object are predominantly orange and golden yellow, with little pops of blue and white. M82 is a galaxy seen nearly edge-on with its disk crossing from about 10 o'clock to about 4 o'clock in this image from Chandra.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
