Puppis A RGBHO (“true color”, 2x Down-Sampled)

OTA: CDK17

Camera: SBIG STXL11002 with AOX and FW8G (0.63 arcsec/pxl)

Observatory: Heaven’s Mirror, Chile

EXPOSURES:

Red: 6 x 900 sec.

Blue: 9 x 900

Green: 6 x 900

O: 33 x 1800

H: 28 x 1800

Total exposure ~36 hours

Image Width: ~40 arcsec

Processed by Alex Woronow (2020) using PixInsight, Skylum, Topaz, SWT

This versions retains only about 25% of the pixel count present in the original!

The fragments of the nebula in this image originated from a supernova explosion whose light would have reached the earth just about in time for the last of the Homo neanderthalensis to witness the event before their extinction, around 40,000 years ago. The supernova remnants appear scattered over about one square degree of our sky today, but this image captures only ~ 0.3 sq- degs, so the nebular-wisps at the image borders only hint at its full extent.

A neutron star, with the strange moniker of the “Cosmic Cannonball” (or, for you scientists, RXS J0822-4300) appears to have sourced the supernova and now speeds away from the explosion site at some 3 million mph! The star seems destined to flee the galaxy in quick order…on the scale of millions of years. No explanation for this star’s high speeds currently holds favor. Another speculation about the Cosmic Cannonball posits that it is a “Quark Star.” A neutron star that cannot support its weight, it is speculated, can collapse into quark matter—a final state between a neutron star and a black hole.

This fugitive star is not visible in this image, but it lies about in the center (left-to-right) and at the bottom edge of the image.

Side note: Puppis is Latin for the stern of a ship--Poopdeck derives from the word Puppis. Hence when afloat, one can say, "I'm going aft to find the puppis. Aaaarg!" The constellation, Puppis, was carved from the large constellation Argos Navis, named for the ship on which Jason and the Argonauts sailed in search of the Golden Fleece. Two other constellations were discovered hidden in Argos Navis: Carina (the keel) and Vela (the sail). This partitioning took place in the mid-1700s.