When stars more than eight times the size of Sun have consumed all their fuel reserves they end their lives in an enormous explosion termed as Supernova. After a supernova the top layers of the star are forcefully thrown out into space at speeds ranging in thousands of miles per hour. The result of the explosion is that a small neutron star takes the place of its ancestor. These small neutron stars are only a few miles in diameter but are so dense that neutron stars having a diameter of just ten miles weigh more than the Sun.
NASA’s Chandra Telescope has shown the 2,000 year old remains such an explosion, known as the RCW 103 which occurred about 10,000 light years from Earth. The neutron star can be seen as a blue dot in the image above. To their surprise scientists noticed that the neutron star is rotating every 6.7 hours which is much slower than they normally rotate and it also exhibits unusually large variations in its X-ray emission over a period of years.
Researchers have stated that the when the explosion occurred the ancestor of RCW 103 might not have exploded alone. They hope that a low-mass star that is too dim to see is orbiting near the neutron star. Gas from this mysterious neighbor might be powering its X-ray emissions and the interaction in the magnetic fields might be the result for this slow rotation of the star.
Via: Physorg
