Mysterious Object CK Vulpeculae: Appeared in Year 1670 | Gemini North Telescope
The enigmatic CK Vulpeculae nebula. This picture shows the remains of the new star that was seen in the year 1670. 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.
Distance to Earth: ~10,000 light years
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.
https://noirlab.edu/public/programs/gemini-observatory/gemini-north/
Image Processing: Travis Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), Jen Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), Mahdi Zamani & Davide de Martin
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