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APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
Cooling Neutron Star
Explanation: Supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is a comfortable 11,000 light-years away. Light from the Cas A supernova, the death explosion of a massive star, first reached Earth just 330 years ago. The expanding debris cloud spans about 15 light-years in this composite X-ray /optical image, while the bright source near the center is a neutron star ( inset illustration ) the incredibly dense, collapsed remains of the stellar core. Still hot enough to emit X-rays, Cas A's neutron star is cooling. In fact, 10 years of observations with the orbiting Chandra X-ray observatory find that the neutron star is cooling rapidly , so rapidly that researchers suspect a large part of the neutron star's core is forming a frictionless neutron superfluid . The Chandra results represent the first observational evidence for this bizarre state of neutron matter.
| Date | March 5, 2011 |
|---|---|
| Credit |
Credit: X-ray: NASA / CXC / UNAM / Ioffe / D.Page , P.Shternin et al ; Optical: NASA / STScI ; Illustration: NASA/ CXC /M.Weiss) |
| Authors & editors: | Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) |
| A service of: |
ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U. |