by Astronomers at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab have made the first confirmed detection of a star system that will one day form a kilonova, an ultra-powerful, gold-producing explosion created by merging neutron stars.
Researchers said on Tuesday they had used data from the SMARTS 1.5-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile to discover the first example of the phenomenally rare type of binary star system. The results are published in the journal Nature.
The arrangement, known as CPD-29 2176, is so surprisingly rare that only about ten such systems are thought to exist in the Milky Way galaxy.
CPD-29 2176, is located approximately 11,400 light-years from Earth and was first identified by NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.
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The 1.5m SMARTS telescope in Chile
(Rodrigo Hinojosa)
After further observation with the telescope, scientists were able to deduce the orbital characteristics and types of stars that make up this system: a neutron star that was created by an ultra-stripped supernova and a massive star in close orbit that is becoming an ultra-bare supernova itself.
An ultra-stripped supernova is the end-of-life explosion of a massive star that has had much of its outer atmosphere stripped away by a companion star.
Artist’s impression of the first confirmed detection of a star system that will one day form a kilonova – the ultra-powerful gold-producing explosion created by the merger of neutron stars.
(NOIRLab)
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“The current neutron star should form without ejecting its companion from the system. An ultra-stripped supernova is the best explanation for why these companion stars are in such a tight orbit,” said the lead author. article, Noel Richardson of Embry-Riddle. Aeronautical University, said in a statement. “To one day create a kilonova, the other star would also have to explode into an ultra-stripped supernova so that the two neutron stars could eventually collide and merge.”
This long exposure photograph shows the movement of stars at night above the 4-meter Blanco Telescope (left) and the 1.5-meter SMARTS Telescope (right) at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a program of NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomical Research Laboratory.
(Credit: CTIO//NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/D. Munizaga)
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It will take at least a million years for the massive star to end its life as a titanic supernova explosion and leave behind a second neutron star. The authors stated that the stellar remnant and the preexisting neutron star will have to come closer together before merging and noted that the resulting kilonova explosion will produce much stronger gravitational waves and leave behind a large amount of elements heavy, especially silver and gold.
