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Originally Posted by gregbradley
Thanks Bert. Sorry for the slow response I am at my dark site.
That is very interesting. It seems to show there must be multiple explosions rather than just one big one which makes sense when such a large object explodes. Some of those tendrils form a near perfect sphere.
Widefield lens imaging is great and I like your images and what you have done with your 5DH. Very innovative.
Greg.
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Actually Greg, what you have is only the one explosion at the centre of the object....the original supernova. What all the bubbles, tendrils and such form from is the way the shockwave from the explosion is interacting with the surrounding gases. These gases come from both the original star (from its pre-supernova outflows) and from gases that surrounded the star that were present before the star existed (the nebula it sat in). What causes these gases to fluoresce is the shockwave piling the gases up and heating them. When you have gases that come from stellar winds and such, that created shock disturbances themselves in the surrounding gases being impinged upon by the supernova shockwave, you get all sorts of complicated interactions.
There is also the geometry of the explosion to consider, both in the way the shockwave rips through the star's body as it explodes and in the symmetry of the general explosion. The shockwave which rips through the star isn't normally a nice neat spherical shock front. In actual fact, it's extremely turbulent and more like a boiling mass of hot gas than some neat blast wave like you see in a classic explosion (like you see in pictures of detonating nukes). Then depending on the how the initial shock is generated in the core, the shape of the core, it's rate of rotation and quite a few other factors, the explosion might not occur in all directions simultaneously. You could get a lopsided explosion, say, out one side of the star, so most of the explosive force is directed away from one side. It could go in any direction!!.
So, you see, a supernova explosion is more complicated than you think