Reclusive Neutron Star May Have Been Found in Famous Supernova - Jet Propulsion Laboratory

On the left, data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows a portion of the remains of an exploded star known as supernova 1987A.

On the right, an illustration of what may lie at the center of the supernova remnant, a structure known as a “pulsar wind nebula.” Larger view.

The energetic environment has been imaged by NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR (shown in blue) and the Chandra X-ray Observatory (shown in red), which has finer resolution?

A group of astronomers using data from NASA space missions and ground-based telescopes may have finally found it.

While astronomers watched debris explode outward from the site of the detonation, they also looked for what should have remained of the star’s core: a neutron star.

Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and previously unpublished data from NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), in combination with data from the ground-based Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) reported last year, now present an intriguing collection of evidence for the presence of the neutron star at the center of SN 1987A.

“For 34 years, astronomers have been sifting through the stellar debris of SN 1987A to find the neutron star we expect to be there,” said the leader of the study, Emanuele Greco, of the University of Palermo in Italy.

When a star explodes, it collapses onto itself before the outer layers are blasted into space.

These objects have been dubbed neutron stars, because they are made nearly exclusively of densely packed neutrons.

Rapidly rotating and highly magnetized neutron stars, called pulsars, produce a lighthouse-like beam of radiation that astronomers detect as pulses when its rotation sweeps the beam across the sky.

There are two likely explanations for this energetic X-ray emission: either a pulsar wind nebula, or particles being accelerated to high energies by the blast wave of the explosion.

The latter effect doesn’t require the presence of a pulsar and occurs over much larger distances from the center of the explosion.

The latest X-ray study supports the case for the pulsar wind nebula – meaning the neutron star must be there – by arguing on a couple of fronts against the scenario of blast wave acceleration.

“Astronomers have wondered if not enough time has passed for a pulsar to form, or even if SN 1987A created a black hole,” said co-author Marco Miceli, also from the University of Palermo.

The Chandra and NuSTAR data also support a 2020 result from ALMA that provided possible evidence for the structure of a pulsar wind nebula in the millimeter wavelength band.

While this “blob” has other potential explanations, its identification as a pulsar wind nebula could be substantiated with the new X-ray data.

This is more evidence supporting the idea that there is a neutron star left behind.

If this is indeed a pulsar at the center of SN 1987A, it would be the youngest one ever found.

The center of SN 1987A is surrounded by gas and dust.

As is often the case, more data are needed to strengthen the case for the pulsar wind nebula.

On the other hand, if astronomers observe a decrease in the high-energy X-rays, then the presence of a pulsar wind nebula will be corroborated.

The stellar debris surrounding the pulsar plays an important role by heavily absorbing its lower-energy X-ray emission, making it undetectable at the present time.

Thus, the pulsar emission is expected to emerge in about 10 years, revealing the existence of the neutron star.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program.

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science from Cambridge Massachusetts and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

NuSTAR's mission operations center is at UC Berkeley, and the official data archive is at NASA's High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center.

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