CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 2 (UPI) — Through the years, astronomers have assembled thousands of images depicting Cassiopeia A in all its electromagnetic glory — its bright shell of cosmic gases and spewed radio waves rendered in a full range of color.
Despite its photogenic ways, few have documented the interior of Cassiopeia A. But a new imaging technique — a sort of CAT scan for the cosmos — has allowed astronomers to peer inside the remnants of a dead star.
What they’ve found inside are six bubble-like cavities — pockets of gas in the midst of swirling cosmic material. The new imaging reveals Cassiopeia A to be composed of a Swiss cheese-like structure.
“Our three-dimensional map is a rare look at the insides of an exploded star,” study author Dan Milisavljevic, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a press release.
Cassiopeia A, or Cas A for short, is what is called a supernova remnant (SNR) in the constellation Cassiopeia. The energy-rich structure, left behind by an exploded star, is one the brightest sources of high-frequency radio waves in the sky. Only the sun beams out more waves at frequencies higher than 1 GHz.
Astronomers have long wanted to get past the big, bright and powerful outer shell in order to better understand how and why stars explode, and to gain more insight into the process of a supernova.
“We’re sort of like bomb squad investigators,” Milisavljevic said. “We examine the debris to learn what blew up and how it blew up. Our study represents a major step forward in our understanding of how stars actually explode.”
The researchers were able to determine that the pockets or bubbles are composed of radioactive nickel, which will eventually decay into iron. One of the bubbles is six light-years across, while another is three.
The new research was published last week in the journal Science.
Comment count on this article reflects comments made on Breitbart.com and Facebook. Visit Breitbart's Facebook Page.