The object, now known as SN 1181, is one of a handful of supernovas documented before the invention of telescopes, and it has puzzled astronomers for centuries.
ByAstronomers have found a leftover 'zombie star' from a supernova that once shone in the night sky a thousand years ago.The striking object appeared as bright as Saturn in the vicinity of the constellation Cassiopeia, and historical chronicles from China and Japan recorded it as a "guest star."
"There are 20 or 30 candidates for Type Iax supernovas," said Takatoshi Ko, lead author of the study published July 5 in the The Astrophysical Journal. "But this is the only one that we know of in our own galaxy." Ko is a doctoral student of astronomy at the University of Tokyo. The nebula is about 7,000 light-years away from Earth, and at its center there is a fast-spinning, Earth-size object called a white dwarf - a dense, dead star that has depleted its nuclear fuel. The feature is unusual for a supernova remnant because the explosion should have obliterated the white dwarf.
That massive collision might explain another curious aspect of the SN 1181 zombie star. It contains no hydrogen or helium, which is highly unusual in space, Zijlstra said. The study suggests that this inner shock region might be a sign that the star has started to burn again, centuries after the explosion, leading to a surprising find, Ko added: High-speed stellar wind seems to have started blowing from the surface of the star just 20 to 30 years ago.
"It's not clear how that relates to the wind turning on," he said. "I would have expected the star to have brightened rather than faded."
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