When you accidentally discover a sparkling star in the vast universe and the black night sky, there is a moment when you suddenly wonder regarding the star’s life.
With the development of technology, it has become possible to clearly observe numerous moments of stars that are difficult to observe with the naked eye.
According to the international journal Nature on the 19th (local time), a research team from the University of Alberta in Canada has discovered 21 new supernova remnants.
Usually, the lifespan of a star is determined by its initial mass, but when it becomes heavy following repeating hydrogen fusion reactions for a long time, it causes a big explosion.
At this time, the star emits the energy that the sun would emit throughout its lifetime, becoming a ‘supernova’ that emits more than 10,000 times more light and gradually disappears.
A star in the Milky Way explodes in a supernova at least once every 100 years, ejecting clouds of dust and gas many light years away.
This debris contains useful information regarding the galaxy, such as the type of star that exploded, other stars or planets, and life, and is used as a meaningful data for astronomers to study the universe.
Usually, stellar remnants are detected by radio emission during the explosion, but most of them were not detectable because the radio waves were faint.
But recently, a team of PhDs from the University of Alberta, Canada, led by Brianna Ball, has discovered a new way to track supernova remnants.
It is a combination of images from two radio telescopes with good technology.
One is ASKAP (Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder), a radio telescope with 36 antennas in Western Australia, and the other is Parkes Observatory, a radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia.
The result was the discovery of 21 new supernova remnants previously unseen in the night sky.
In the published photos, five of the newly discovered 21 supernova remnants are vividly colored.
The color in the picture represents temperature, with purple in the coldest area. Blue, green, and red follow, with white representing the hottest area.
Dr. Brianna said, “We are only now discovering supernova remnants that previous telescopes did not have resolution or sensitivity to detect,” and added, “I look forward to discovering more (supernova) remnants in the future.”
Previously, in July of last year, NASA released to the public a picture captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of a dying star.
▲ The Southern Ring Nebula, taken by JWST. Scenes observed with near-infrared wavelengths on the left and mid-infrared wavelengths on the right.
Even in the image of the Southern Ring Nebula, a planetary nebula released by NASA at the time, you can see the expanding gas cloud surrounding the dying star.
▲ Eunha So from ‘Stephan’s Quintet’ released by NASA
Then, in 1877, the first small group of galaxies, ‘Stephen’s Quintet’, shows cosmic dust more clearly than in the previous photo.
NASA introduced this image as “a scene where galaxies collide” and emphasized that “it provides new insights into how interactions between galaxies in the early universe led to the evolution of the universe.”
(Photo = ‘NASA’ Twitter, Captured from the homepage of the journal Nature)
