Two supernova factories found in the Milky Way (Forwarded)
- From: Andrew Yee <ayee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:27:38 GMT
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Date: 28 March 2008
Ref.: PN 08/14 (NAM 05)
Two supernova factories found in the Milky Way
The discovery of two "supernova factories", rare clusters of Red
Supergiant (RSG) stars, located in the Galactic Bar of the Milky Way will
be presented at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Belfast on Tuesday
1st April.
"RSGs represent the final brief stage in a massive star's lifecycle before
it goes supernova. They are very rare objects, so to find this many in the
same place is remarkable. Together they contain 40 RSGs, which is nearly
20% of all the known RSGs in the Milky Way. These stars are all at the
brink of going supernova," said Dr Ben Davies of the Rochester Institute
of Technology.
The two clusters are located next to each other on the edge of the
Galactic Bar which is ploughing through the disc of the Milky Way. It is
likely to be this interaction between the bar and the disc that triggered
the star formation event that created the clusters.
The clusters are about 20 000 light years from Earth and separated from
each other by 800 light years. Cluster 1 contains 14 RSGs and is 12
million years old; Cluster 2 contains 26 RSGs and is 17 million years old.
Massive stars are rarely observed because they burn their fuel up very
quickly. RSGs are doubly rare because they are only a brief period of that
short life cycle.
Dr Davies said, "The next supernova could go off in one of these clusters
at any time. We estimate that it's about 5000 years between explosions for
these clusters and we can see the remnants of a supernova that went off
around 5000 years ago. That means that the next one could be any time
between today and 7008 AD."
The team identified the clusters initially using the mid-infrared Galactic
Plane survey (GLIMPSE), a huge database of images taken by the Spitzer
Space Telescope. They found two distinct groupings of bright stars very
close to one another in the constellation of Scutum. Using the Keck
Telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, they were then able to pin-point the exact
distance from Earth of each star in each group. These observations showed
that, in each group, large numbers of stars were at exactly the same
distance from Earth, and therefore were members of the same cluster.
Dr Davies said, "The discovery of these clusters gives us a great
opportunity to answer some long-standing questions in astrophysics, such
as exact mechanisms of how massive stars evolve toward supernovae, and how
the Galactic Bar can trigger huge starburst events in the Milky Way."
IMAGES
Images can be found at
http://www.cis.rit.edu/~bxdpci/RSGCimages
NOTES FOR EDITORS
RAS NATIONAL ASTRONOMY MEETING
The RAS National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2008) is hosted by Queen's
University Belfast. It is principally sponsored by the RAS and the STFC.
NAM 2008 is being held together with the UK Solar Physics (UKSP) and
Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial (MIST) spring meetings.
RED SUPERGIANTS (RSGs)
Red Supergiants are approximately 14-18 times the mass of the Sun. Their
diameters are many hundreds of times the diameter of the Sun and around a
million Suns could fit inside one RSG.
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