SUPERNOVA REMNANT N 63A MENAGERIE
A violent and chaotic-looking mass of gas and dust
is seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image of a nearby supernova
remnant. Denoted N 63A, the object is the remains
of a massive star that exploded,
spewing its gaseous layers out into an already turbulent
region.
The supernova remnant is a member of N 63, a star-forming
region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Visible
from the southern hemisphere, the LMC is an irregular
galaxy lying 160,000 light-years from our own Milky
Way galaxy. The LMC provides excellent examples
of active star formation and supernova remnants
to be studied with Hubble.
Many of the stars in the immediate vicinity of
N 63A are extremely massive. It is estimated that
the progenitor of the supernova that produced the
remnant seen here was about 50 times more massive
than our own Sun. Such a massive star has strong
stellar winds that can clear away its ambient medium,
forming a wind-blown bubble. The supernova that
formed N 63A is thought to have exploded inside
the central cavity of
such a wind-blown bubble, which was itself embedded
in a clumpy portion of the LMC's interstellar medium.
Images in the infrared, X-ray, and radio emission
of this supernova remnant show the much more expanded
bubble that totaly encompasses the optical emission
seen by Hubble. Odd-shaped mini-clouds or cloudlets
that were too dense for the stellar wind to clear
away are now engulfed in the bubble interior. The
supernova generated a propagating shock wave, that
continues to move rapidly through the low-density
bubble
interior, and shocks these cloudlets, shredding
them fiercely.
Supernova remnants have long been thought to set
off episodes of star formation when their expanding
shock encounters nearby gas. As the HST images have
illustrated, N 63A is still young and its ruthless
shocks destroys the ambient gas clouds, rather than
coercing them to collapse and form stars. Data obtained
at various wavelengths from other detectors reveal
on-going formation of stars at 10-15 light-years
from N 63A. In a few million years, the supernova
ejecta from N 63A would reach this star formation
site and may be incorporated into the formation
of planets around solar-type stars there, much like
the early history of the solar system.
The Hubble image of N 63A is a color representation
of data taken in 1997 and 2000 with Hubble's Wide
Field Planetary Camera 2. Color filters were used
to sample light emitted by sulfur, oxygen, and hydrogen.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and The Hubble Heritage
Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: Y.-H. Chu and R. M. Williams (UIUC) |
