Journey to Mysterious Object CK Vulpeculae: Appeared in Year 1670

Journey to Mysterious Object CK Vulpeculae: Appeared in Year 1670

This video sequence takes the viewer deep into a rich part of the northern Milky Way in the constellation of Vulpecula (The Fox), close to the more famous constellation of Cygnus (The Swan) to the enigmatic CK Vulpeculae nebula. Using radio telescope data from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) in Chile, the Hawaiian Submillimeter Array (SMA) and visible light data from the Gemini North Observatory in Hawaii, the final picture shows the remains of the new star that was seen in the year 1670. This view was created from a combination of visible-light images from the Gemini telescope (blue), a submillimeter map showing the dust from the SMA (yellow) and finally a map of the molecular emission from APEX and the SMA (red).

Distance to Earth: ~10,000 light years

The star that European astronomers saw in 1670 was not a typical nova, but may have been a much rarer, violent breed of stellar collision. A nova is a sudden and dramatic increase in the brightness of a star. CK Vulpeculae was spectacular enough to be easily seen with the naked eye during its first outburst, but the traces it left were so faint that very careful analysis using submillimeter telescopes is required.

Models suggest CK Vulpeculae may not be a classic nova; rather it may be classified as a luminous red nova that is the result of two main sequence stars colliding and merging. A 2018 study found it was most likely the result of an unusual collision of a white dwarf star and a brown dwarf star. However, a 2020 article ruled out this proposed mechanism and proposes that CK Vulpeculae is an intermediate luminosity optical transient (ILOT), another type of object in the luminosity gap between supernovae and novae.

Learn about APEX & SMA:

https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/apex/

https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/facilities-technology/telescopes-instruments/submillimeter-array-maunakea-hi

Credit: ESO/T. Kamiński

Release Date: March 23, 2015

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