| Nov 14, 2012 | |
Life and death in a star-forming cloud |
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| (Nanowerk News) The aftershock of a stellar explosion rippling through space is captured in this new view of supernova remnant W44, which combines far-infrared and X-ray data from ESA’s Herschel and XMM-Newton space observatories. | |
| W44, located around 10 000 light-years away within a forest of dense star-forming clouds in the constellation of Aquila, the Eagle, is one of the best examples of a supernova remnant interacting with its parent molecular cloud. | |
| The product of a massive star that has already reached the end of its life and expelled its outer layers in a dramatic explosion, all that remains of the stellar behemoth is the spinning core of a neutron star, or pulsar. | |
| Identified as PSR B1853+01, the pulsar is the bright point to the top left in W44, coloured light blue in this image: | |
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| Supernova remnant W44 captured by ESA’s Herschel and XMM-Newton. (Credits: Herschel: Q. Nguyen Luong & F. Motte, HOBYS Key Program consortium, Herschel SPIRE/PACS/ESA consortia. XMM-Newton: ESA/XMM-Newton) | |
| It is thought to be around 20 000 years old and as it rapidly rotates it sweeps out a wind of highly energetic particles and beams of light ranging from radio to X-ray energies. | |
| The centre of the supernova remnant is also bright in X-rays, coming from the hot gas that fills the shell, at temperatures of several million degrees. Dense knots of high-energy emission reflect regions where heavier elements are more commonly found. | |
| At the cooler edge of the cavity, gas is swept up as the supernova remnant propagates through space. | |
| At the top right of the expanding shell, there is a smaller cavity, with the shock from the supernova remnant impacting the bight arc-shaped feature. This region is filled with hot gas that has been ionised by the intense ultraviolet radiation from embedded young massive stars. | |
| Herschel’s far-infrared eyes can also seek out regions of gently heated gas and dust further from W44, where new stars are congregating. | |
| Examples include the arrowhead-shaped star-formation region to the right of W44, which appears to point to another trio of intricate clouds further to the right and above. | |
| More broadly, a number of compact objects scattered across the scene map the cold seeds of future stars that will eventually emerge from their dusty cocoons. | |
| Finally, diffuse purple emission towards the bottom left of the image provides a glimpse of the Galactic plane. |
| Source: European Space Agency (ESA) | |
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