Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust: Chandra/Spitzer Image

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Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

Megan Watzke 617-496-7998
Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Mass.
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

IMAGE ADVISORY: 2010-102 March 29, 2010

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust: Chandra/Spitzer Image

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-102&cid=release_2010-102

PASADENA, Calif. -- A new image from NASA's Chandra and Spitzer space telescopes shows
the dusty remains of a collapsed star. The dust is flying past and engulfing a nearby family of
stars.

"Scientists think the stars in the image are part of a stellar cluster in which a supernova
exploded," said Tea Temin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge,
Mass., who led the study. "The material ejected in the explosion is now blowing past these stars
at high velocities."

The composite image of G54.1+0.3 is online at
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/?IDNumber=pia12982 . It shows the Chandra X-ray
Observatory data in blue, and data from the Spitzer Space Telescope in green (shorter
wavelength) and red-yellow (longer). The white source near the center of the image is a dense,
rapidly rotating neutron star, or pulsar, left behind after a core-collapse supernova explosion. The
pulsar generates a wind of high-energy particles -- seen in the Chandra data -- that expands into
the surrounding environment, illuminating the material ejected in the supernova explosion.

The infrared shell that surrounds the pulsar wind is made up of gas and dust that condensed out
of debris from the supernova. As the cold dust expands into the surroundings, it is heated and lit
up by the stars in the cluster so that it is observable in infrared. The dust closest to the stars is the
hottest and is seen glowing in yellow in the image. Some of the dust is also being heated by the
expanding pulsar wind as it overtakes the material in the shell.

The unique environment into which this supernova exploded makes it possible for astronomers to
observe the condensed dust from the supernova that is usually too cold to emit in infrared.
Without the presence of the stellar cluster, it would not be possible to observe this dust until it
becomes energized and heated by a shock wave from the supernova. However, the very action of
such shock heating would destroy many of the smaller dust particles. In G54.1+0.3, astronomers
are observing pristine dust before any such destruction.

G54.1+0.3 provides an exciting opportunity for astronomers to study the freshly formed
supernova dust before it becomes altered and destroyed by shocks. The nature and quantity of
dust produced in supernova explosions is a long-standing mystery, and G54.1+0.3 supplies an
important piece to the puzzle.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

The Spitzer observations were made before the telescope ran out of its coolant in May 2009 and
began its "warm" mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages
Spitzer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted
at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech
manages JPL for NASA.

More information on the Spitzer Space Telescope is online at:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer . More information on the
Chandra X-ray Observatory is at: http://chandra.harvard.edu and http://chandra.nasa.gov .

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