NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) has taken a new observation of what may be the first documented evidence of a supernova, RCW 86.
RCW 86 is approximately 8,000 light-years from Earth in the Southern constellation of Circinus, occupying a region of the sky slightly larger than the full moon. In the year 185 AD, Chinese astronomers recorded witnessing a “guest star” in this area of the night sky that remained visible for 8 months.
NASA’s IXPE observed the outer rim of the supernova remnant highlighted in purple at the lower right. When NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory targeted RCW 86, they discovered that a large “cavity” region around the system led the supernova to expand larger in a shorter amount of time than expected. The low-density cavity region could have led to RCW 86’s unique shape as well.
The full image puts IXPE’s data into context with legacy observations from two other X-ray telescopes: Chandra and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton. The yellow represents low-energy X-rays, while blue shows high-energy X-rays detected by Chandra and XMM-Newton. The starfield in the image comes from the National Science Foundation’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NOIRlab).
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
This is an X-ray and optical image of supernova remnant RCW 86, which appears to be two slightly mismatched halves of a broken rough circle. The colors in the image are predominantly blue and gold with a spot of bright purple in the lower right corner. The texture of RCW 86 resembles that of nebulous and patchy fingers, and swirls of gas. This image combines data from four different telescopes to create a multi-wavelength view of the remains of an exploded star. X-ray images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ESA's XMM-Newton are combined to form the blue and gold colors in the image. The X-rays show the interstellar gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by the passage of the shock wave from the supernova. Additional X-ray data from NASA's IXPE are shown in purple, confined to a small circle in the lower right where IXPE observed. A faint starfield, a sprinkling of white stars across the image, from NSF's NOIRlab is also included.
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