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Astrophysics

Lopsided stellar death

Nature volume 506, pages 298–299 (2014)Cite this article

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Observations of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A offer an unprecedented look back at the centre of this explosion, and support the hypothesis that spatial asymmetry is key to explaining the event. See Letter p.339

Elements of the periodic table from carbon upwards are synthesized in massive stars during their evolution, and also in the supernovae by which such stars end their lives. Following these explosive events, the stars' nucleosynthetic products are redistributed back to the interstellar medium from which the stars formed. Partial validation of these ideas has come from observations of the abundances of elements in the Solar System, which necessarily give results averaged over many supernovae. Detailed examination of such processes in individual supernovae, especially those occurring at their centres, where iron-group elements are produced, has remained intractable. On page 339 of this issue, Grefenstette et al.1 present the first measurement of the spatial distribution of the nuclear-decay products of titanium-44, a radioactive nucleus produced at the heart of such explosions. The result potentially heralds a new phase in our understanding of these events.

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Figure 1: A dying star turned inside out.

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  1. J. Martin Laming is in the Space Science Division, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC 20375, USA.,

    J. Martin Laming

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  1. J. Martin Laming
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Correspondence to J. Martin Laming.

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Laming, J. Lopsided stellar death. Nature 506, 298–299 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/506298a

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