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A recurrent nova super-remnant in the Andromeda galaxy

Nature volume 565, pages 460–463 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

The accretion of hydrogen onto a white dwarf star ignites a classical nova eruption1,2—a thermonuclear runaway in the accumulated envelope of gas, leading to luminosities up to a million times that of the Sun and a high-velocity mass ejection that produces a remnant shell (mainly consisting of insterstellar medium). Close to the upper mass limit of a white dwarf3 (1.4 solar masses), rapid accretion of hydrogen (about 10−7 solar masses per year) from a stellar companion leads to frequent eruptions on timescales of years4,5 to decades6. Such binary systems are known as recurrent novae. The ejecta of recurrent novae, initially moving at velocities of up to 10,000 kilometres per second7, must ‘sweep up’ the surrounding interstellar medium, creating cavities in space around the nova binary. No remnant larger than one parsec across from any single classical or recurrent nova eruption is known8,9,10, but thousands of successive recurrent nova eruptions should be capable of generating shells hundreds of parsecs across. Here we report that the most frequently recurring nova, M31N 2008-12a in the Andromeda galaxy (Messier 31 or NGC 224), which erupts annually11, is indeed surrounded by such a super-remnant with a projected size of at least 134 by 90 parsecs. Larger than almost all known remnants of even supernova explosions12, the existence of this shell demonstrates that the nova M31N 2008-12a has erupted with high frequency for millions of years.

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Fig. 1: 12a and its surrounding super-remnant.
Fig. 2: Spectroscopy of the super-remnant shell.
Fig. 3: Results of hydrodynamic simulations of the interacting ejecta of multiple recurrent nova eruptions.

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Data availability

All relevant data generated or analysed during this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The Liverpool Telescope is operated on the island of La Palma by Liverpool John Moores University in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias with financial support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA HST, obtained from the Data Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. These observations are associated with programmes GO:14125 and GO:14651 for which financial support for R.H., M.H., M.M.S. and A.W.S. was provided by NASA through grants from STScI. This work is based on observations made with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), installed in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, in the island of La Palma. The Hobby–Eberly Telescope (HET) is a joint project of the University of Texas at Austin, the Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. HET is named in honour of its principal benefactors, William P. Hobby and Robert E. Eberly. We thank Z. Levay for creating a colour composite image of the nova super-remnant, I. A. Steele for assistance with the Liverpool Telescope spectra, K. L. Page for assistance with XSPEC, K. A. Misselt and D. Baer for assistance with the Steward 2.3-m observations, also M. Link and C. Proffitt, and W. Eck and K. Long, the programme coordinators and contact scientists for HST GO:14125 and GO:14651, respectively. M.J.D. and M.W.H. acknowledge financial support and a PhD studentship, respectively, from the STFC. N.M.H.V. acknowledges support from the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship 2014 programme (grant agreement number 659706). V.A.R.M.R. acknowledges financial support from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia in the form of an exploratory project (reference IF/00498/2015), from the Center for Research and Development in Mathematics and Applications (strategic project UID/MAT/04106/2013), and from Enabling Green E-science for the Square Kilometer Array Research Infrastructure (ENGAGE SKA), POCI-01-0145-FEDER- 022217, funded by Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (COMPETE 2020) and the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal.

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Nature thanks S. Shore and J. Sokoloski for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK

    M. J. Darnley, M. F. Bode, D. J. Harman, E. J. Harvey & M. W. Healy

  2. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    R. Hounsell

  3. Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    R. Hounsell

  4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    R. Hounsell

  5. Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    T. J. O’Brien

  6. Department of Astronomy, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA

    M. Henze & A. W. Shafter

  7. Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain

    P. Rodríguez-Gil & R. Galera-Rosillo

  8. Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain

    P. Rodríguez-Gil & R. Galera-Rosillo

  9. American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA

    M. M. Shara

  10. Centre for Star and Planet Formation, Niels Bohr Institute and Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    N. M. H. Vaytet

  11. Data Management and Software Centre, The European Spallation Source ERIC, Copenhagen, Denmark

    N. M. H. Vaytet

  12. Vice Chancellor’s Office, Botswana International University of Science and Technology, Palapye, Botswana

    M. F. Bode

  13. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    R. Ciardullo & B. D. Davis

  14. Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    R. Ciardullo

  15. XMM-Newton Observatory SOC, European Space Astronomy Centre, Madrid, Spain

    J.-U. Ness

  16. Center for Research and Development in Mathematics and Applications, Departamento de Física, Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

    V. A. R. M. Ribeiro

  17. Instituto de Telecomunicações, Aveiro, Portugal

    V. A. R. M. Ribeiro

  18. Physics Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

    S. C. Williams

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  1. M. J. Darnley
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the discussion, proposing and planning of observations, data interpretation and writing of this manuscript. M.J.D. and S.C.W. led the Liverpool Telescope observations. M.J.D. and R.H. wrote the proposals and led the HST observations and resulting analysis. P.R.-G. and M.J.D. proposed and led the GTC observations and R.G.-R. assisted with their analysis. R.C. and B.D.D. obtained the HET spectrum. A.W.S. acquired the Steward 2.3-m Bok Telescope data. M.H. analysed the archival X-ray data. M.J.D., M.W.H. and S.C.W. undertook the photoionization analysis. M.J.D., T.J.O’B. and N.M.H.V. led the hydrodynamic simulations. M.J.D. and N.M.H.V. produced the synthetic X-ray spectra.

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Correspondence to M. J. Darnley.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 Additional multi-wavelength imaging of the super-remnant region.

a, The Steward 2.3-m Bok Telescope Hα image that allowed the association between the nebulosity and 12a to be made. Image orientation is as in Fig. 1 but the image is 80″ × 80″. b–d, HST Wide Field Camera 3 broad-band filter images of the region around 12a. Image sizes are 40″ × 40″. These three panels show the F275W (ultraviolet) (b), F475W (optical) (c), and F814W (optical) (d) filters. The white contours in c show iso-flux regions as derived from the ground-based Hα + [N ii] image. As b–d were taken towards the end of the 2015 eruption, the nova can be seen in the images. The F275W image clearly illustrates the lack of bright ultraviolet sources within the super-remnant. The white dashed ellipse indicates the extent of the super-remnant; the red dotted lines indicate the position of 12a.

Extended Data Fig. 2 HET flux-calibrated spectrum of the super-remnant outer-shell.

As with the GTC spectrum of the same region (Fig. 2), there is negligible continuum and hydrogen Balmer emission lines and nebular lines of [N ii], [O ii] and [S ii]. The mean spectral resolution for the ‘blue arm’ is 1.68 Å and for the ‘orange arm’ is 4.04 Å (see Methods). Gaps in the spectrum indicate areas where skyline subtraction residuals remained.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Comparison of results from the hydrodynamic modelling using a range of spatial resolutions.

The blue and green lines indicate simulations of 20 eruptions with spatial resolutions of 0.02 au and 0.2 au, respectively, while the red and black lines indicate simulations of 100 eruptions with resolution 0.2 au and 0.4 au, respectively. a, Gas density radial distribution; the lower black dotted horizontal line indicates the ISM density, with the upper dotted line showing the consistent peak density of the super-remnant shell. b, Gas pressure radial distribution. c, Gas velocity radial distribution. d, Gas temperature radial distribution.

Extended Data Fig. 4 The effect of radiative cooling on the super-remnant dynamics.

a–d, Panels as in Extended Data Fig. 3. The close match between the results of simulations of 1,000 eruptions without radiative cooling (black) and with radiative cooling (blue).

Extended Data Fig. 5 Additional results of the hydrodynamic simulations of the interacting ejecta of multiple recurrent nova eruptions.

a, The mass growth of the super-remnant outer shell for up to 100,000 eruptions (see key). The diagonal dotted line illustrates a power-law extrapolation of the outer-shell mass to further eruptions. The upper and lower solid grey lines indicate the growth of the outer-shell mass for higher and lower ISM densities, respectively. The horizontal dotted line marks the predicted outer-shell mass at the current extent of the super-remnant. b, The evolution of the expansion velocity of the outer shell (black) compared to the mean velocity within the ejecta pile-up region (red). The diagonal dotted lines indicate power-law extrapolations, the horizontal line the initial injection velocity, and the vertical line the predicted current epoch. c, The evolution of the X-ray (0.3–10 keV) luminosity of the super-remnant (black), the hard (1–10 keV; red) and soft (0.3–1 keV; blue) components are shown for information along with the hardness ratio HR (hard/soft; right-hand axis) evolution; for each, the dotted line indicates a power-law extrapolation to later times. The horizontal dotted black line indicates the 3σ upper limit from the XMM-Newton observations.

Extended Data Fig. 6 The full (uncooled) simulations of 100,000 eruptions.

a–d, Panels as in Extended Data Fig. 4.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Super-remnant X-ray emission modelling.

In both panels the cyan, blue, green, red and black lines indicate simulations of 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000 and 100,000 eruptions, respectively. The top panel shows the contribution to the super-remnant emission as a function of photon energy (in units of kT). The vertical dotted line indicates the lower-limit (0.08 keV) cut-off for input into XSPEC. The bottom panel shows the resultant synthetic X-ray spectra of the super-remnant (0.3–10 keV).

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Darnley, M.J., Hounsell, R., O’Brien, T.J. et al. A recurrent nova super-remnant in the Andromeda galaxy. Nature 565, 460–463 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0825-4

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