Discovery of youngest known Galactic Supernova Remnant
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Dr Dave Green of Cambridge University and an international team of
astronomers including Dr Stephen Reynolds of North Carolina State
University have found the youngest known supernova remnant in our
Galaxy. By comparing observations made with the the Very Large Array
(VLA) radio telescope in the US and the orbiting Chandra X-ray
observatory, they deduce that supernova remnant G1.9+0.3 is a mere
150 years old.
A supernova remnant (SNR) is the material ejected by a supernova - the
self-destructive explosion which occurs when a star much more massive
than the Sun reaches the end of its life. The SNR expands in size as
the ejecta travel outwards in all directions from the site of the
former star. By taking pictures of the SNR at times some years apart,
we can measure the expansion speed and extrapolate back to infer how
long ago the explosion occurred - the age of the SNR. About 250 SNRs
are currently known in our own Galaxy, the Milky Way, and prior to the
discovery of G1.9+0.3, the youngest age measured was about 340 years.
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Radio images of G1.9+0.3 from 1985 and 2008.
Move cursor on/off image for blink comparison.
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For more information, see:
Forthcoming papers on G1.9+0.3:
- The radio expansion and brightening of the very young supernova
remnant G1.9+0.3
Green, D.A., Reynolds, S.P., Borkowski, K.J., Hwang, U.,
Harrus, I., Petre, R., 2008,
MNRAS, 387, L54 (also arXiv:0804.2317v1 [astro-ph])
- The Youngest Galactic Supernova Remnant: G1.9+0.3
Reynolds, S.P., Borkowski, K.J., Green, D.A., Hwang, U.,
Harrus, I., Petre, R., 2008,
ApJ, 680, L41 (also arXiv:0803.1487v2 [astro-ph])
Last modified: 15 May 2008 |
