Latest news with #INAF
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Super-magnetic dead star throws a violent temper tantrum as NASA X-ray spacecraft looks on
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Using NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) spacecraft, astronomers have made detailed observations of a highly magnetic dead star or "magnetar" as it threw a massive tantrum. The observations mark the first time that the polarization of X-rays from a magnetar, neutron stars possessing the most powerful magnetic fields in the known universe, have been measured during an outburst or "activation phase." The erupting magnetar observed by IXPE is known as 1E 1841-045, a neutron star located around 28,000 light-years from Earth in the supernova wreckage known as Kes 73, which shocked astronomers when it burst to life on Aug. 20, 2024. "This is the first time we have been able to observe the polarization of a magnetar in an active state, and this has allowed us to constrain the mechanisms and geometry of emission that lie behind these active states," team leader and National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) researcher Michela Rigoselli said in a statement. "It will now be interesting to observe 1E 1841-045 once it has returned to its quiescent state to monitor the evolution of its polarimetric properties." Like all neutron stars, magnetars begin when the lives of stars with ten times the mass of the sun or greater run out of fuel for nuclear fusion. This ends the production of outward radiation pressure flowing from the cores of these stars that, for millions of years, has supported them against the inward pressure of their own a result of this, the cores of these massive stars crush down at a rapid rate, creating shock waves that ripple into the outer stellar layers of the star, triggering massive supernova explosions that send most of the mass of these stars hurtling into space, creating wreckage fields like Kes 73. What is left behind is the core of the star, crushed down to a width of around 12 miles (20 kilometers) but with a mass between one and two times that of the sun. This leads to material filling the neutron star that is so dense that if a teaspoon of it were brought to Earth, it would weigh 10 million tons, about equal to 85,000 adult blue whales. Another consequence of the collapse of the stellar core that births a neutron star is that the magnetic field lines of that star are squashed together. The closer together the magnetic field lines are, the stronger the magnetic field gets. As a result, neutron stars have the strongest magnetic fields in the known universe. Magnetars take this to the extreme, possessing magnetic fields that are up to 1 trillion times stronger than Earth's magnetosphere. The magnetic environments around these stars are unlike anything found anywhere else in the universe and way beyond anything we could generate on can get hints about these magnetic fields and the environments around magnetars by measuring the organized orientation or "polarization" of light emitted from them. Magnetars and the phenomena around them get even more extreme when they are in an active outburst phase. During these phases, magnetars can release as much as 1,000 times the energy they do when in a quiescent phase. Yet astronomers still aren't clear on the mechanisms that ramp up this energy output. Observations like this one could help change that. Related Stories: — What happens inside neutron stars, the universe's densest known objects? — James Webb Space Telescope finds neutron star mergers forge gold in the cosmos: 'It was thrilling' — The most powerful explosions in the universe could reveal where gold comes from What this team found was that X-rays from 1E 1841-045 become increasingly polarized at higher energy levels. Yet the X-rays kept the same polarization angle throughout this ramping up of energy levels. They reason that this means that the components behind the emissions are somehow connected. Additionally, the highest energy component, which is the most elusive and difficult to study, is strongly influenced by the magnetic field of the team's research was published on Wednesday (May 28) in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Strange red nova deaths of shrouded stars investigated by 'stellar Sherlocks'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The name "Intermediate Luminosity Red Transients" or "ILRTs" might not be an astronomical term you are familiar with, but these rare, brightness-shifting stars have been quite the mystery in astronomical terms. Now, a team of cosmic detectives, who have dubbed their work "A Study in Scarlett" after the Arthur Conan Doyle novel that first introduced the world to Sherlock Holmes, may have finally cracked the case. The stellar Sherlocks from across the globe suggest that ILRTs are stars that don't just erupt when they reach the end of their lives but experience "truly terminal" and destructive supernova explosions. "Following the discovery of three new ILRTs in 2019, we seized the opportunity to study and better understand these phenomena," team leader and National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) researcher Giorgio Valerin said in a statement. "We have, therefore, collected data for years through telescopes scattered around the world and even several telescopes in orbit. "We have also resumed the observation campaign of NGC 300 OT, the closest ILRT ever observed, at 'just' six and a half million light-years from us." The ground-based instruments used included La Palma, La Silla, Las Campanas, and Asiago, while data was also collected from space-based telescopes, including the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory (SWIFT), and the Spitzer space telescope. ILRTs have been somewhat confusing because their brightness is between that of novas, stellar explosions that stars survive, and "classical" supernovas in which a massive star is destroyed, leaving behind a neutron star or a black hole. The team reached their findings by observing the evolution of four ILRTs. They hoped that this would help them determine whether the star survives these explosions or is completely wiped out. The key to solving this mystery was observing ILRTs like NGC 300 OT over long periods of time. "The first images of NGC 300 OT date back to 2008, and in this work, we have observed it again to study its evolution after more than ten years," Valerin said. "The analysis of the images and spectra collected during these observing campaigns has allowed us to monitor the evolution over time of our targets, obtaining information such as the brightness, temperature, chemical composition, and gas velocities associated with each ILRT we have studied." The Spitzer observations of NGC 300 OT showed this ILRT dimming to a tenth of the brightness of the progenitor star that created this eruption over the course of seven years. Spitzer's images of NGC 300 OT ended when they faded below the detection threshold of this NASA space telescope, which retired in 2020. Just as Holmes made his name investigating many cases, the team had another set of ILRT data to peruse. Analyzing JWST observations of the ILRT AT 2019abn located in the nearby galaxy Messier 51 (M51), they found that this transient is declining in brightness in such a way that it is likely to meet the same fate as NGC 300 OT by becoming fainter than its progenitor star. From this information, the team concluded that ILRTs are explosions that see the total destruction of a star. That is despite the fact that ILRTs appear to be significantly weaker than "classical" core-collapse supernovas. The question is, how do they remain fainter than similar supernova events? The team of cosmic detectives suggests that a defining factor in the make-up of ILTRs could be a dense shroud of gas and dust that surrounds the progenitor stars. This cocoon is heated to temperatures as great as around 10,300 degrees Fahrenheit (5,700 degrees Celsius) over just a few days. The peak in temperature corresponds with a peak in brightness for the ILRT. As this happens, the gas in this stellar shroud accelerates to speeds as great as 1.6 million miles per hour (700 kilometers per second), which is around 1,000 times as fast as the top speed of a Lockheed Martin F-16 jet fighter. "This speed is decidedly lower than that of an exploding supernova, which often reaches 10,000 kilometers per second [22 million mph],' team member and INAF researcher Leonardo Tartaglia said. "Yet, we believe that the star may have really exploded, throwing material at thousands of kilometers per second in every direction, but that this explosion was partially suffocated by the dense blanket of gas and dust around the star, which heats up as a consequence of the violent impact." Thus, the launch of material from around the stellar progenitors of ILRTs can explain how they decrease in brightness over long periods of time. The team termed this phenomenon an "electron capture supernova" a type of stellar explosion that has been long theorized but had not been believed to have been observed. Electron-capture supernovas have been of great interest to astronomers because they seem to mark a boundary between stars of around 10 solar masses and more that explode in supernovas to leave behind black holes and neutron stars, and stars with masses more like the sun that don't "go nova" but fade away as white dwarf stellar remnants. Related Stories: — Dead stars within supernova explosions could solve the dark matter mystery in 10 seconds — Could a supernova ever destroy Earth? — Hubble Telescope sees rare supernova explosion as a violent 'pale blue dot' (image) "We are finally seeing the events that separate stars destined to explode as classical supernovas from stars that will slowly fade away as white dwarfs," Valerin said. Perhaps the team would agree with Holmes' words from The Sign of the Four: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!"The team's research was published across two papers on March 7 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
