Astronomers in China and Japan keep the appearing of a " Edgar Guest star " in 1181 CE . It was a supernova and for the following 840 age it was lost . In 2021 , a peculiar nebula was spotted by citizen scientist Dana Patchick and it was linked back tothe witness event . Called Pa 30 , it became a fascinating secret because it does n’t search like any other supernova remnant . It look like a dandelion .
Astronomers do not cognize why it wait that way . Its singularity want more indepth observations . Using the Keck Cosmic Web Imager ( KCWI ) at the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea , Hawai’i Island , researchers were able-bodied to mensurate how the peculiar tendrils move and visualise out its three - dimensional social structure .
“ We discover the cloth in the filament is expound ballistically , ” co - lead source Tim Cunningham , a NASA Hubble Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics , Harvard & Smithsonian , order in astatement . “ This mean that the material has not been slow up down nor rush up since the plosion . From the deliberate velocities , looking back in clock time , you may nail the plosion to almost exactly the year 1181 . ”
Observations of Pa 30. It does look like a dandelion!Image Credit: Robert Fesen
Thanks to the observation , the team was able to work out that there is a globular structure within the fireworks streaks of the supernova remnant – and the explosion is likely to have been asymmetrical . The source of the filaments though , rest uncertain .
“ A reverse impact waving may be condensing fence dust into filaments , but we do n’t be intimate yet , ” lend Cunningham . “ The sound structure of this object is very strange and fascinating . ”
scientist believe this was a Type Iax supernova , a subclass of the Type Ia. In these supernova , a white dwarf could blend with another clean dwarf or it might steal material from a companion until it reaches a decisive floor and explodes . In the specific Iax subclass , the lily-white dwarf is not completely eliminate by the process leaving behind a remnant white dwarf , which is called azombie star .
“ Because this was a fail explosion , it was fainter than normal supernova , which has been show to be reproducible with the diachronic record , ” tally co - lead author Ilaria Caiazzo , supporter professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria .
While weaker than other result , the explosion was still formidable . The filaments are moving away from the site of the supernova at about 1,000 kilometers ( 610 miles ) per second .
A newspaper talk about the result is published inThe Astrophysical Journal Letters .
