Question Supernova remnant

[Marvin Jenkins]

I have been reading the most excellent book BANG! The complete history of the universe. Page 66 dealing with Supernova remnants mentions a star in the region of 160 solar masses.

It is referred to as a Pair-instability supernova and no black hole or neutron star is formed but all the material is thrown outwards becoming available for the formation of more stars.

Is the Veil nebula the consequence of one of these Pair-instability supernova?

Marv

[robin_astro]

Hi Marv,

This NASA reference suggests the progenitor for the Veil was a 20 solar mass star so a type II supernova which ran out of fuel and collapsed, the released gravitational energy powering the explosion.  Most of the material would have been thrown out to produce the nebula, though there should be a neutron star left behind somewhere (A pulsar, the rapidly rotating, slowly cooling dense core of the star)

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/veil-nebula-supernova-remnant

The crab nebula is an other recent example of a type II supernova

 (Note type Ia supernovae also produce remnant nebulae but don't leave a star  behind as the white dwarf is completely destroyed in the thermonuclear explosion)

Cheers

Robin

[robin_astro]

18 hours ago, robin_astro said:

there should be a neutron star left behind somewhere

Your question prompted me to go in search of the Veil supernova pulsar (In the literature, not the sky !)  I turned up this possible candidate

"DISCOVERY OF A PULSAR WIND NEBULA CANDIDATE IN THE CYGNUS LOOP"

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/754/1/L7/meta

Robin

[Marvin Jenkins]

Great find, very interesting stuff although inevitably way above my pay grade. As seen as you are on a winning streak, BANG also makes a passing reference to a Hyper Nova. Are there any known Hyper Nova remnants visible in our night sky?
 

That must be one really big event, always ending in a black hole I would presume?
 

Marvin

[robin_astro]

22 hours ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

Are there any known Hyper Nova remnants visible in our night sky?
 

That must be one really big event, always ending in a black hole I would presume?

Hypernovae are thought to be particularly energetic supernovae formed by core collapse of massive stars so yes, potentially producing a black hole if the remaining core is massive enough to form a black hole rather than a neutron star (Note that it is suspected that not all stars that collapse  into a black holes necessarily produce a supernova explosions though. I believe this is an area of study)  The spectrum of hypernovae show them to be type Ic, similar to type II but the original star had lost all its hydrogen before the explosion (hydrogen is not seen in the spectrum). The lines in hypernovae spectra  are much broader though because of the high velocity of the explosion so are characterised as type Ic BL. Here is an example of   supernova which I classified as a type Ic BL. I don't know if it was powerful enough to count as a hypernova though.

https://wis-tns.weizmann.ac.il/object/2017ixv

Someone has kindly listed the known details of galactic supernova remnants here.  Most are of unidentified type  but there are some type Ic and some possible black holes. Not sure if any are hypernovae though

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supernova_remnants

This article does identify a possible extra galactic hypernova remnant though in M101

https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/20may99.html

(Treat the explanation with caution though - it is over 20 years ago)

Robin