Nebula IRAS 00500+6713 suggests its central star is unlike any seen before

Nebulas are clouds of dust and gas in certain regions in space—many of them can be seen with the naked eye in the night sky. Nebulas can also be associated with single or multiple star systems.

In this new effort, the researchers were studying the nebula IRAS 00500+6713 because last year, another team of researchers had discovered a central star, called J005311, with a stellar wind of unusually high speeds.

In taking a closer look at the star and its history, the researchers found that it had formed due to a collision between two white dwarves—an event that typically leads to a supernova and annihilation of both stars.

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Credit: Astronomy & Astrophysics (2020). DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202039232

Images of IRAS 00500+6713 in mid-infrared and X-ray wavelength ranges.

Left panel: IR Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) image: red and green correspond to 22 μm at two intensity scales, and blue corresponds to 12 μm. A ring-like structure with a diameter of ∼2′ is seen within the nebula.

Right panel: X-ray EPIC image: red: 0.2–0.7 keV, green: 0.7–1.2 keV, blue: 1.2–7.0 keV. The adaptively smoothed image shows that X-ray emission uniformly fills the whole ∼4′ extent of the IR nebula.

At the distance of IRAS 00500+6713, 1′ corresponds to 0.86 pc. The coordinates are in units of RA (J2000) and Dec (J2000) on the horizontal and vertical scales, respectively

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White dwarfs are basically the burned-out cores of stars.

When a red giant expels most of its outer material it becomes a planetary nebula and what remains is the core of the star which becomes a very hot white dwarf with a temperature over 100,000 Kelvin.