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Glossary term: Stellar Remnants

Description: "Stellar remnants" is the collective term for white dwarfs, neutron stars, and stellar-mass black holes. These represent the final stage of stellar evolution after a star has both finished hydrogen burning on the main sequence and evolved through the giant phase. Stellar remnants are very compact compared to stars. White dwarfs (the largest type of stellar remnant) have approximately a solar mass of material in an object the size of Earth. Stellar remnants do not generate heat from nuclear fusion in their cores. In close binary systems stellar remnants can be the source of novae, Type Ia supernovae, or (if two stellar remnants spiral towards each other and collide) bursts of gravitational waves.

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Term and definition status: This term and its definition have been approved by a research astronomer and a teacher

The OAE Multilingual Glossary is a project of the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) in collaboration with the IAU Office of Astronomy Outreach (OAO). The terms and definitions were chosen, written and reviewed by a collective effort from the OAE, the OAE Centers and Nodes, the OAE National Astronomy Education Coordinators (NAECs) and other volunteers. You can find a full list of credits here. All glossary terms and their definitions are released under a Creative Commons CC BY-4.0 license and should be credited to "IAU OAE".

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A neutron star appears as a blue spot surrounded by shells of material which appear as red and green rings

Death of a massive star

Caption: A multi-wavelength image taken with telescopes on the Earth and in space of a neutron star within our neighbouring Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy. A neutron star (seen here as the blue spot surrounded by a red ring) is the final product of gravitational collapse, compression and explosion of a massive star, left embedded in its supernova remnant (in green).
Credit: ESO/NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)/F. Vogt et al. credit link

License: CC-BY-4.0 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons


An irregular blue bubble with mottled red inside it on a field of background stars

Remnant of SN 1006

Caption: This image shows the remnant of the supernova SN 1006. This was probably the result of a white dwarf that accreted so much material from a binary companion star that the white dwarf exploded (this is called a Type 1a supernova by astronomers). This explosion happened several thousand years ago, however it took time for the light from this event to reach Earth, only arriving in the year 1006. This bright explosion was noticed by observers across the Earth and its appearance was noted in the records of many different societies. Here we see the effect that supernova has had on its surroundings in the galaxy. The force of the explosion has blown a huge bubble in the surrounding interstellar gas with a hot shockwave at its edge. The image appears to be a simple color picture but it actually represents light far beyond what our eye can see. The blue is X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the yellow and orange are data from optical telescopes and the red is detections in radio waves from the Very Large Array and the Green Bank Telescope. The bright blue of the outer shell shows the gas there is very hot and that the explosion produced energetic shock waves.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/G.Cassam-Chenai, Hughes et al.; Radio: NRAO/AUI/NSF/GBT/VLA/Dyer, Maddalena & Cornwell; Optical: Middlebury College/F.Winkler, NOAO/AURA/NSF/CTIO Schmidt & DSS credit link

License: PD Public Domain icons


The pulsar appears as a bright spot in the center with a series of colored ripples moving away from it on two sides

The Crab Pulsar

Caption: At the heart of the Crab Nebula, situated approximately 6,500 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus, lies the Crab Nebula Pulsar. This is remnant of a massive star that exploded at the end of its life. This happened several thousand years ago but the light from this explosion only reached the Earth in the year 1054. This celestial event was viewed by people across the world with many different societies noting it in their records. The Crab Nebula Pulsar rotates about 30 times per second and emits light in many different wavelengths, including the visible spectrum. It is roughly one and a half times the mass of the sun but the force of the explosion that formed it crammed this mass into a tiny space, roughly ten kilometres in radius. This image is a composite of several observations conducted by the Gemini North observatory in Hawaii, USA. The pulsar can be seen at the center. The observations that this image was created from were taken over a period of five years. Data from 2009 is shown in blue and data from 2014 is shown in red. Over this time material has flowed away from the pulsar resulting in this colored ripple effect. Again the colors do not show real colors in the image, the ripples show the positions of the shockwaves as they moved away from the pulsar and hit into the surrounding gas.
Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AUR, Jen Miller, Travis Rector, Mahdi Zamani & Davide de Martin credit link

License: CC-BY-4.0 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons

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