The supernova seen in 1181, now in high definition

I love it when an astronomy story connects with chronicles from almost a thousand years ago. In 1181, observers in China and Japan recorded the appearance of a "new star" that remained visible for months. Today that glow is believed to have been the supernova that left behind the nebula Pa 30, and astronomers have just captured the sharpest image of it we have.

The observations were made with the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, and they reveal about ten times more structure than previous ones. The long filaments that make the nebula look like a firework or a dandelion turn out to actually be chains of gas knots, like beads on a necklace.

Each "pearl" measures about four light-days across. What surprised the team most is how uniform they are and how orderly they appear along the filaments, when something far more chaotic was expected. The work was published in The Astrophysical Journal.

And there's another detail I find fascinating: at the center of Pa 30, a "zombie star" survives. Part of the white dwarf withstood the explosion, something typical of the rare Type Iax supernovae. Studying these knots could help reconstruct what that explosion witnessed by our ancestors was like.

Source: WIRED en Español