Say It With A Supernova: Fly Through A Heart-Shaped Nebula Of ‘Nuclear Waste’ On Valentine’s Day

Cards, flowers, chocolates … and gas filaments of nuclear waste? Valentine’s Day usually prompts an astronomer somewhere to gush about a heart-shaped something in the night sky, but this year a rather intriguing—and iconic—object has been highlighted by the Royal Astronomical Society. 

The Crab Nebula, also known as M1, is a supernova remnant—the leftovers of an explosion of a star in the year 1054—of the kind that one will day surround where will-it-won’t-it supernova candidate star Betelgeuse is now. We know this because the presence of a very bright star was noted by Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arab astronomers. It’s in the constellation of Taurus, which is riding high in the southern sky this month as seen from the northern hemisphere. 

Now it’s been mapped in unprecedented detail to create a 3D image published this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“Astronomers will now be able to move around and inside the Crab Nebula and study its filaments one by one,” said Thomas Martin, a researcher at Université Laval who led the study. 

The team produced this video (below) of a 3D fly-through of the Crab Nebula with a soundtrack that’s a “sonification” of the data set.

Judge for yourself whether this 3D map reveals a “honeycomb heart” within its central void, but there is something undeniably romantic about supernovae, albeit violently so.

After all, we contain traces of elements forged in supernova explosions—we are all made of “star stuff.” Also know that the beautiful filaments of gas in the Crab Nebula are, technically speaking, actually nuclear waste spreading out into the cosmos. 

Equally as interesting is the team’s discovery about the star’s explosion over a thousand years ago. 

“The Crab is often understood as being the result of an electron-capture supernova triggered by the collapse of an oxygen-neon-magnesium core, but the observed honeycomb structure may not be consistent with this scenario,” said Dan Milisavljevic, an assistant professor at Purdue University and co-author. The Crab’s ejecta is arranged in large-scale rings, suggesting a turbulent mixing and radioactive plumes expanding from its collapsed iron core. 

If you’re after heart-shaped morphology in the cosmos, do check out the “Heart Nebula” (IC 1805). Not a supernova remnant but an emission nebula—ionized gases—the Heart Nebula is 7,500 light years distant in the constellation Cassiopeia.

Supernova explosions are among the most energetic and most important phenomena in the Universe because they create heavy elements. They then add them to clouds of dust and gas that later collapse to form stars, planets and life itself.

“It is vital that we understand the fundamental processes in supernovae which make life possible,” said Milisavljevic. 

The team used the SITELLE imaging spectrometer on the Canada-Hawaii-France Telescope (CFHT) in Mauna Kea, Hawaii to compare the 3D shape of the Crab to two other supernova remnants. 

The last supernova visible from Earth was in 1987—Supernova 1987A—which exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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