Spotted this great image, yes a real image, last night! It looks like a firework going off!
It’s of the supernova remnant Pa 30 and was taken by the Gemini Observatory (north).
It’s probably the only one of these I have ever seen an image of and could also be the only one we know about in the entire Galaxy.
Pa 30 (IRAS 00500+6713) has a central white dwarf star (eventually what our Sun will become).
The idea is that this supernova ejecta formed in 1181 and may have been observed / documented by Chinese and Japanese astronomers. It’s thought to have formed when two white dwarfs collided.
Those long radial filaments are likely caused by Rayleigh- Taylor instabilities. The authors of the paper below suggest that these could be what’s left over from a slower ejecta shell that has been shaped into these long, narrow structures by the winds of the white dwarf star.
The white dwarf itself is fascinating. Likely rapidly rotating and has a very powerful magnetic field (almost as strong as a millisecond pulsar).
Truly an odd, yet wonderful Galactic object!
Open access paper about this object: arxiv.org/abs/2301.04809
Image: noirlab.edu/public/…
📸 International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/T. Cunningham/J. Miller & M. Rodriguez /T.A. Rector /D. de Martin & M. Zamani
