Cassiopeia A is not dying peacefully. Is it a rare magnetar?
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena reported this week that NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has made accidental and surprising infrared images of light echoes from a star that was supposed to have died 325 years ago in a supernova explosion. But the new infrared information indicates Cassiopeia has released "at least one burst of energy as recently as fifty years ago" from its cosmic grave 11,000 light-years from Earth.
[The echo of an energy burst is the first witnessed around a long-dead star and the largest ever seen. Another astronomer at UA, George Rieke, Ph.D., said, "We had no idea that Spitzer would ever see light echoes. Sometimes you just trip over the biggest discoveries."]
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