Handbook of Supernovae Athem W
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Handbook of Supernovae Athem W. Alsabti • Paul Murdin Editors Handbook of Supernovae With 850 Figures and 60 Tables 123 Editors Athem W. Alsabti Paul Murdin University College London Observatory Institute of Astronomy University College London University of Cambridge London, UK Cambridge, UK ISBN 978-3-319-21845-8 ISBN 978-3-319-21846-5 (eBook) ISBN 978-3-319-21847-2 (print and electronic bundle) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21846-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943059 © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To our host institutions for their tolerant hospitality: University College London Observatory and Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge Preface The term “supernovae” was first coined and used in 1931 to refer to eruptions of stars more powerful than novae. By 1938, the term “supernovae” was used to refer to a class of explosive stars discovered in many galaxies. Further studies revealed that our own Galaxy was a host of many such events recorded in history such as the Crab Nebula (SN1054 AD), Tycho’s Supernova (SN1572 AD), and Kepler’s Supernova (SN1604 AD), among many others discovered more recently with modern detection methods. With the advance of physics in the 1930s, the way stars synthesize elements beyond hydrogen and helium became increasingly understood; quantum mechanics gave rise to an understanding of white dwarf stars and the prediction of neutron stars and general relativity to black holes. In other words, the fate of the various types of stars was becoming clearer. However, there were still many issues relating to these problems that remained to be solved. Other landmarks related to supernovae worth mentioning include the lecture that Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar gave in 1935 to the Royal Astronomical Society predicting theoretically the possible collapse of white dwarfs of a specific mass into a black hole. Another is the paper of 1957 known as B2FH (referring to its authors, Margret Burbidge, Geoffrey Burbidge, William Fowler, and Fred Hoyle), where the road map was laid out for the mechanism of how stars manufacture the chemical elements. This paper, and subsequent research in explosive astrophysics, pushed our knowledge of how supernovae of a variety of types lead to the nucleosynthesis of heavy elements in the periodic table and in particular those with atomic number higher than iron. Indeed, we probably owe our existence in some way to supernovae for the processes which have influenced the creation and evolution of the solar system, planets, and life. On the observational side, Supernova 1987A, a relatively nearby supernova, even if in a neighbor galaxy, not our own, was close enough to be studied in detail, leading not only to an interest in neutrino astrophysics but also to a refined understanding of the supernova phenomenon, that is, the bright star that appears and fades. On one hand, the observation of neutrinos led to a focus on the crucial role that neutrinos play in supernovae. Additionally, focus on the explosion phenomenon in various types of supernova led to the discovery that the members of a particular class – the vii viii Preface Type Ia supernovae – explode in such a way as to be considered a standard candle. The brightness of these objects, visible in galaxies at vast distances, means that they can be used to determine the size and the expansion rate of the Universe. These methods have recently been refined to such a high degree and applied to observations of such accuracy in programs of such statistical scope that they uncovered the accelerating nature of the cosmic expansion. A big influence on our own personal involvement in supernova studies took off in the 1960s when the first pulsar was discovered by Antony Hewish and his student Jocelyn Bell in 1967. At that time, both of us were students, one of us at Manchester University and the other at Oxford University. This event contributed to our choices of research topics as postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows, at Manchester and at Rochester, NY, and Herstmonceux, respectively. One of us studied evolved supernova remnants (like the Monoceros Loop) and the other pulsars (the Crab and Vela pulsars) and black holes (like Cygnus X-1), all of them the outcome of core- collapse supernovae. Our personal fascination with supernova science has lasted ever since, even if now we get most of our satisfaction by observing what the young people are discovering than discovering new stuff ourselves. It has been a great pleasure to read the articles in this collection as they came in and learn what has happened since we retired from active research. We have been particularly drawn to an interest in a new branch of astronomy – astrochemistry – that indicated that complex molecules are created in space, many of them organic. Evidence has been found on the Earth, on the Moon, and in meteorites of radio isotopes indicative of an impact of direct radiation on the solar system and of the solar system passing through single and multiple remnants of expanding supernovae of various ages. An even newer branch of astronomy, the study of gravitational waves, has combined just one year of observation with a century of theory to add extra impact and relevance to research into supernovae and the black holes which they can create. Astronomy is about natural phenomena studied by whatever science is appro- priate. Nowhere is this more true than in the field of supernova research. It encompasses several scientific fields, some of which seem not at first to be closely related. Supernovae and the phenomena associated with them bring together branches of physics and chemistry, even meteorology and biology, in connected multidisciplinary studies of interest to a wide variety of specialists. For all these reasons, and with our personal interest in supernova research, we set out to edit this major reference work. Our aim was to bring together the advanced work in the many fields connected to supernovae in such a way that one specialist viewing supernovae through the spectacles of his or her own expertise could find the expertise of a specialist in another area to help put together a more complete picture. Nothing would please us more than to learn in the future of a doctoral student finding a connection in this book between his or her own work and some other aspect of supernova research. There have already been published several excellent books about individual branches of this topic. Some are very advanced, while others less so. There are proceedings of conferences on specific elements of the topic. However, to our Preface ix knowledge, this is the first inclusive didactic work on the complete range of supernova science published to date – as complete as we could make it. Both of us are active members of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). It was during IAU General Assembly meetings worldwide that the idea for undertaking this work emerged, encouraged by Maury Solomon, who also attended the IAU General Assembly meetings, tempting authors and editors to publish with Springer. Her direct encouragement to us as we speculated about the book and her subsequent visits to the UK gave us the “push” to go ahead. Once work started on this large reference work, Springer gave us all the support we needed, assembling a team led by Daniela Graf and Kerstin Beckert who took the responsibility of managing the large number of authors and scientific editors to deliver the final papers to production. This book consists of 12 parts. Each part has had a section editor who planned the detail of what was to be covered in each part, selected and contacted the authors to fit into our overall plan, and acted as referees for the contributions. We read and approved every paper ourselves, editing the presentation if necessary. Clearly, the section editors and the authors are the heroes of this work, and we thank them for the support of this project. London, UK Athem W. Alsabti Cambridge, UK Paul Murdin Contents Volume 1 Part I Supernovae and Supernova Remnants .................... 1 Athem W. Alsabti and Paul Murdin 1 Supernovae and Supernova Remnants: The Big Picture in Low Resolution .................................. 3 Athem W. Alsabti and Paul Murdin 2 Discovery, Confirmation, and Designation of Supernovae ....... 29 Hitoshi Yamaoka Part II Historical Supernovae .................................. 35 David A. Green 3 Historical Supernovae in the Galaxy from AD 1006 ............ 37 David A. Green 4 Historical Records of Supernovae ...........................