RCW 103
| Image exposure: 64.5 minutes | Image field of view: 19.7 x 12.6 arcmin | Image date: 2022-06-25 |
Ten thousand years light years away, deep in the rich star clouds of the Southern Milky Way, in the constellation of Norma*, a high-mass star ran out of nuclear fuel.
It’s core collapsed and the star exploded. It was a type II supernova.
The light first reached us two thousand years ago. No, dear reader, it wasn’t the so-called star of Bethlehem.
This supernova remnant, which we call RCW 103 and we now see as a 2,000 year old object, is now dissipating and is all that remains of the original star to tell us about the event . . . .
. . . well, not quite.
At its heart lies a neutron star catalogued as 1E 161348-5055, the remains of the original star which went supernova. It is a dense and unusual periodic X-ray source with a period of 6.67 hours.
Dense because neutron stars have a mass of about 1.4 solar masses squeezed into a diameter of only about of 20 kilometres. Unusual because it seems to be rotating too fast for a neutron star so young. Astronomers like a puzzle.
*The Norma constellation was not named after an astronomer’s lady friend. It was named after a carpenter’s square.
| Telescope: | Meade LX-90 200mm Schmidt-Cassegrain (deforked); 2000 mm f/l @ f/10. |
| Optics: | Astronomik light pollution filter. |
| Mount & Guiding: | SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro mount. |
| Imaging camera: | ZWO ASI 071 MC cooled. |
Images © Roger Powell 🙃
Previous Posts
Cosmic Focus
ABOVE US ONLY SKY : amateur astronomy in australia
Cosmic Focus 
A smear in the Universe’s Memory Bank.
LikeLiked by 1 person