These three images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveal a disk of previously ejected material around an erupting star being illuminated by a torrent of light unleashed during a stellar outburst.
Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 imaged the double-star system T Pyxidis, or T Pyx, over a four-month period. T Pyx is a recurrent nova, erupting every 12 to 50 years. T Pyx's latest outburst was in April 2011. The star is the white blob in the middle of each image.
Astronomers used Hubble to trace the path of the light emitted from the outburst as it lit up the disk and material from previous ejecta. The white ovals in each image highlight the areas being illuminated by the light. The disk is so vast, about a light-year across, that the nova's light cannot brighten all of the material at once. Instead, the light sweeps across the material, sequentially illuminating parts of the disk, a phenomenon called a light echo. The light reveals which parts of the disk are nearer to Earth and which ones are farther away. By tracing the light, the team assembled a 3-D map of the structure around the nova.
A nova erupts when a white dwarf, the burned-out core of a Sun-like star, has siphoned enough hydrogen off a companion star to trigger a thermonuclear runaway. As hydrogen builds up on the surface of the white dwarf, it becomes hotter and denser until it detonates like a colossal hydrogen bomb, leading to a 10,000-fold increase in brightness in a little more than one day.
T Pyx is located 15,600 light-years away in the southern constellation Pyxis, the Mariner's Compass. The images were taken Sept. 16, Nov. 16, and Dec. 10, 2011.
Credits
NASA, ESA, A. Crotts, J. Sokoloski, and H. Uthas (Columbia University), and S. Lawrence (Hofstra University)| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | T Pyx, T Pyxidis |
| Object Description | Recurrent Nova |
| R.A. Position | 09h 4m 41.49s |
| Dec. Position | -32° 22' 47.49" |
| Constellation | Pyxis |
| Distance | 15,600 light-years (4,800 parsecs) |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | The image was created from Hubble data from proposal : A. Crotts, J. Sokoloski, and H. Uthas (Columbia University). |
| Instrument | HST>WFC3 and HST>STIS |
| Exposure Dates | May 2010 - May 2012 |
| Filters | WFC3: F225W, F487N, F502N, F547M, F600LP, F656N, F658N, and FQ422M STIS: G430L and G750L |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
