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RCW 103: A Star with a Mystery Partner?
When stars are more massive than about 8 times the Sun, they end
their lives in a spectacular explosion called a supernova. The
outer layers of the star are hurtled out into space at thousands of
miles an hour, leaving a debris field of gas and dust. Where the star
once was located, a small, incredibly dense object called a neutron
star is often found. While only 10 miles or so across, the tightly
packed neutrons in such a star contain more mass than the entire Sun.
A new X-ray image shows the 2,000 year-old-remnant of such a cosmic
explosion, known as RCW 103, which occurred about 10,000 light years
from Earth. In Chandra's image, the colors of red, green, and blue
are mapped to low, medium, and high-energy X-rays. At the center,
the bright blue dot is likely the neutron star that astronomers believe
formed when the star exploded. For several years astronomers have
struggled to understand the behavior of the this object, which exhibits
unusually large variations in its X-ray emission over a period of
years. New evidence from Chandra implies that the neutron star near
the center is rotating once every 6.7 hours, confirming recent work
from XMM-Newton. This is much slower than a neutron star of its age
should be spinning. One possible solution to this mystery is that
the massive progenitor star to RCW 103 may not have exploded in isolation.
Rather, a low-mass star that is too dim to see directly may be orbiting
around the neutron star. Gas flowing from this unseen neighbor onto
the neutron star might be powering its X-ray emission, and the interaction
of the magnetic field of the two stars could have caused the neutron
star to slow its rotation.
| Fast Facts for RCW 103: |
| Credit |
NASA/CXC/Penn State/G.Garmire et al |
| Scale |
Image is 11.9 arcmin across |
| Category |
Supernovas & Supernova Remnants |
| Coordinates (J2000) |
RA 16h 17m 36.30s | Dec -51° 02' 24.40" |
| Constellation |
Norma |
| Observation Dates |
02/08/2000 and 03/03/2002
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| Observation Time |
18 hours and 53 minutes |
| Obs. IDs |
970, 2759
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| Color Code |
Red (0.3 - 0.7 keV); Green (0.7 - 1.69 keV); Blue (1.69 - 3 keV) |
| Instrument |
ACIS |
| References | G. Garmire et al. 2006, 36th COSPAR Scientific Assembly. p.3451 |
| Distance Estimate |
About 10,000 light years |
| Release Date |
July 10, 2007 |
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