仙后座A的再循环
(原标题: Recycling Cassiopeia A)
2023-06-01
浏览次数: 12
银河系中的大质量恒星过着壮观的生活。它们的核炉从巨大的宇宙云中坍塌，点燃并在核心产生重元素。几百万年后，富集的物质被喷射回星际空间，在那里恒星的形成可以重新开始。被称为仙后座A的不断膨胀的碎片云是恒星生命周期最后阶段的一个例子。产生这颗超新星残骸的爆炸发出的光大约在350年前首次出现在地球的天空中，尽管这些光花了大约11000年才到达我们这里。这张伪彩色图像由钱德拉x射线天文台和哈勃太空望远镜的x射线和光学图像数据组成，显示了残骸中仍然炽热的细丝和结。在仙后座a的估计距离上，它的跨度约为30光年。特定元素发出的高能x射线已被彩色编码，硅为红色，硫为黄色，钙为绿色，铁为紫色，以帮助天文学家探索银河系恒星物质的循环利用。外层的爆炸波仍在膨胀，呈现蓝色。靠近中心的明亮斑点是一颗中子星，它是大质量恒星核心的密度极高的坍塌残骸。
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Massive stars in our Milky Way Galaxy live spectacular lives. Collapsing from vast cosmic clouds, their nuclear furnaces ignite and create heavy elements in their cores. After a few million years, the enriched material is blasted back into interstellar space where star formation can begin anew. The expanding debris cloud known as Cassiopeia A is an example of this final phase of the stellar life cycle. Light from the explosion which created this supernova remnant would have been first seen in planet Earth's sky about 350 years ago, although it took that light about 11,000 years to reach us. This false-color image, composed of X-ray and optical image data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope, shows the still hot filaments and knots in the remnant. It spans about 30 light-years at the estimated distance of Cassiopeia A. High-energy X-ray emission from specific elements has been color coded, silicon in red, sulfur in yellow, calcium in green and iron in purple, to help astronomers explore the recycling of our galaxy's star stuff. Still expanding, the outer blast wave is seen in blue hues. The bright speck near the center is a neutron star, the incredibly dense, collapsed remains of the massive stellar core.