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Astronomy

Supernovae brought to light

Nature volume 441, pages 1056–1057 (2006)Cite this article

The existing catalogue of Galactic supernova remnants contains only a small fraction of the true number of these stellar explosions. A different observational technique is being employed to find the missing ones.

Just as nuclear bombs on Earth leave their legacy of devastation, stellar explosions — supernovae — leave their mark on the cosmos in the form of supernova remnants (SNRs) in the interstellar gas. The rate of supernova explosions in our Galaxy can be inferred from historical records of visual sightings and through comparison with other galaxies. These data, together with theories of SNR expansion and evolution, allow a prediction of the number of SNRs that should currently reside in our Galaxy. The result is tens of times larger than the number of known remnants, which are catalogued almost exclusively from the radiation they emit at radio frequencies1. Writing in The Astrophysical Journal, Koo, Kang and Salter2 use a new technique to identify the more numerous older SNRs, which were missing from the catalogue because they are radio-dim.

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Figure 1: Supernova supershell exposed.

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  1. Department of Astronomy, University of California, 601 Campbell Hall, Berkeley, 94720-3411, California, USA

    Carl Heiles

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  1. Carl Heiles
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Heiles, C. Supernovae brought to light. Nature 441, 1056–1057 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/4411056a

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