Stunning image reveals the most detailed view of the Milky Way in radio waves: ScienceAlert

Two major astronomical research programs, called EMU and PEGASUS, have teamed up to solve one of our Milky Way mysteries: Where are the supernova remnants?

a Sisa supernova It is an expanding cloud of gas and dust that represents the final stage of a star’s life, after it has exploded as a supernova. But the number of supernova remnants we have detected so far using radio telescopes are extremely small.

The Model Predicts Five Times, So Where’s the Missing Model?

We have collected observations from two of the world’s leading radio telescopes in Australia, viz ASKAP Radio Telescope and Parkes Radio Telescope, Moryangto answer this question.

interstellar gas

The new images reveal wispy tendrils and wisps of clouds held together by hydrogen gas filling interstellar space.

We can see sites where new stars formed, as well as supernova remnants. In just this tiny speck, only about one percent of the entire Milky Way, we have detected more than 20 possible new supernova remnants of which only seven were previously known.

The discovery was led by doctoral student Brianna Ball of Canada’s University of Alberta, in collaboration with her supervisor, Roland Kothes of Canada’s National Research Council, who prepared the images.

This new discovery shows that we are one step closer to identifying the missing remains.

Why do we see them now when we couldn’t before?

Strength unites strength

I drive Universe evolution map Or the EMU program, an ambitious project with ASKAP to create the best radio atlas in the Southern Hemisphere.

The EMU will measure about 40 million distant and amazing new galaxies black holeTo help us understand how galaxies have changed throughout the history of the universe.

Preliminary EMU data has led to discoveries individual radio circuits (or “ORCs”)disclose Rare anomalies such as “dancing ghosts”.

For any telescope, the image resolution depends on the aperture size. Interferometers like ASKAP simulate much larger telescope apertures. With 36 relatively small dishes (each 12 meters and 40 feet in diameter) but a distance of 6 kilometers (4 miles) connecting the farthest disks, ASKAP simulates a single telescope with a dish 6 kilometers wide.

This gives ASKAP good accuracy, but it results in loss of radio emission on a larger scale. In the comparison above, the ASKAP image itself looks very structural.

To recover this lost information, we turned to a companion project called PEGASUS, led by Ettore Caretti of the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics.

PEGASUS used the 64-meter Parkes/Murri telescope—one of the largest single-dish radio telescopes in the world—to map the sky.

Even with such a large dish, Parkes’ accuracy was somewhat limited. By combining information from Parkes and ASKAP, they fill in the gaps with each other to give us the most accurate picture of this region of our Milky Way galaxy.

This combination reveals radio emission at all scales to help uncover missing supernova remnants.

Correlating data sets from EMU and PEGASUS will allow us to uncover more hidden gems. In the next few years we will see unprecedented views of nearly the entire Milky Way, about a hundred times larger than this initial image, but with the same level of detail and sensitivity.

We estimate there may be as many as 1,500 or more new supernova remnants yet to be discovered. Solving the mystery of this missing relic will open a new window into the history of our Milky Way galaxy.

ASKAP and Parkes are owned and operated by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, as part of the Australian National Telescope Facility. CSIRO recognizes the Wajarri Yamatji people as the traditional owners and original owners of the Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara Radio Astronomy Observatory and CSIRO Murchison, where ASKAP is located, and the Wiradjuri people as the traditional owners of the Parkes Observatory.

Andrew HopkinsProfessor astronomers Macquarie University.

This article has been republished from Conversation Under Creative Commons License. Read Original article.