New videos show the evolution of the Crab Nebula and Cassiopeia A.
NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory has released two new timelapse movies showing dramatic changes in two of the most famous supernova remnants in the Universe: the Crab Nebula and Cassiopeia A.
The supernova movies were both created using x-ray data captured by Chandra over a span of two decades.
The Crab Nebula and Cassiopeia A are among the most famous examples of a type of object known as a supernova remnant.
They are all that remain of two massive stars that exploded, leaving an ethereal cloud of cosmic gas and dust in their wake.
Crab Nebula
The first of the two Chandra X-Ray Observatory timelapse movies shows changes in the Crab Nebula.
The supernova that would eventually form the Crab Nebula was recorded by Chinese astronomers in 1054 as a bright new point of light in the sky,
The Crab Nebula is 6,500 lightyears from Earth and at its centre lurks a dense stellar remnant known as a neutron star.
This neutron star is a type that’s known as a pulsar, a spinning star that rotates about 30 times a second, sending a beam of radiation in the direction of Earth in the same way a lighthouse appears to flash at regular intervals.
The pulsar is sending out large amounts of energy into its surroundings.
A strong, rapid flow of matter and anti-matter particles are smashing into the surrounding nebula, producing a shockwave that can be seen as a ring formation in the Chandra timelapse.
The timelapse covers a period of 22 years of Chandra observations and shows changes in both the ring formation and the jets.
Cassiopeia A
Cassiopeia A is all that’s left of a supernova that occured about 340 years ago, and this new Chandra timelapse uses observations of Cas A spanning from 2000 to 2019.
Cassiopeia A is an expanding stellar explosion made up of shockwaves, where particles are being accelerated to energies higher even than those seen on Earth in the Large Hadron Collider.
These shockwaves slam into surrounding cosmic material and slow down, generating a second shockwave that reflects backwards towards the source.
Chandra data had previously revealed that Cas A also has a neutron star at its centre, and the observatory has been able to map elements forged inside the star.
The images in the Cas A movie were created and processed by a team led by Yusuke from Rikkyo University in Japan.