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20101130

MPE News November 30, 2010

INTEGRAL helps unravel the tumultuous recent history of the solar neighbourhood

Analysing new observations in gamma rays with ESA's INTEGRAL observatory, astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and other institutions found evidence that only a few million years ago massive stars enriched our cosmic neighbourhood with heavy elements. The scientists exploited the radioactive decay of an isotope of aluminium, produced in the late stages of a massive star's lifetime, to estimate the age of stars in the nearby Scorpius-Centaurus association, the closest group of young and massive stars to the Sun.

COMPTEL all-sky image of 26Al gamma rays.
Image: Plüschke et al. 2001.

A common technique used in archaeology to establish the age of fossils and other organic samples from the past consists of measuring how much of a particular isotope of carbon, namely carbon-14, they contain. As this radioactive isotope on a time scale of a few thousand years, the amount remaining in these ancient fossils is a strong indicator of the epoch from which they date. The astronomers from MPE have now used an analogous method, based on the radioactive decay of an unstable isotope of aluminium, to probe and assess the age of stars in the Scorpius-Centaurus association, which is located about 300-500 light-years from the Sun, and find a value of 5 million years, consistent with estimates by other methods.

This dating procedure is possible because aluminium is one of the elements synthesised by massive stars during their late evolutionary stages, and its abundance in a star cluster varies strongly with time. One isotope of this element, namely aluminium-26, is radioactive and decays with an exponential lifetime of about one million years.

"Conveniently for astronomers, the decay of aluminium-26 involves a similar time scale to that spanned by the life time of massive stars, which is on the order of a few million years," explains Roland Diehl from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, who led the recent study targeting the gamma-ray emission from this isotope in the Scorpius-Centaurus association. "As its decay time is 'just right', measuring the abundance of aluminium-26 is an excellent tool to trace the presence of young and massive stars, and it allows us to directly estimate their age," he adds.

The evolution of the abundance of 26Al in a stellar group.
Image: R. Voss.

The decay process of aluminium-26 results in a stable isotope of the element magnesium (26Mg) and a number of by-products, including an extremely energetic photon observable in gamma rays at an energy of about 1.8 MeV. Earlier observations, conducted in the 1990s with the COMPTEL instrument on NASA's Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, revealed for the first time the emission of aluminium-26 across the entire sky. Subsequent data collected by ESA's INTEGRAL mission confirmed these results, probing the global properties of this isotope throughout the plane of the Milky Way thanks to INTEGRAL's improved spectral resolution.

The data analysed by Diehl's team focussed on the Scorpius-Centaurus association and revealed robust evidence for recent massive star formation therein. Via stellar winds and supernova explosions, the stars in the Scorpius-Centaurus association are currently enriching the surrounding interstellar medium with heavy elements, including aluminium. Studying the details of these processes gives the astronomers new insights into the influence of recent star formation on our immediate cosmic neighbourhood.

The new INTEGRAL data also allowed the astronomers to refine the estimate of the total content of aluminium-26 in the Milky Way, which is lower by about 20 per cent than previous estimates. This is a critical step that is required to validate our understanding of the star formation and nucleosynthesis processes in our Galaxy. Massive stars and supernovae are the main producers of new atomic nuclei in the universe, but in our own Galaxy is it is difficult to observe them, as they are embedded in and hidden behind interstellar clouds. Penetrating gamma-rays now allow us to compare the predicted rate of supernova explosions to actual measurements.

The ESA Science Program Committee decided in their November meeting to extend the INTEGRAL mission, operated since 2002 and planned initially for 5 years, by two more years until the end of 2014.

Original paper :
	Radioactive ²⁶Al from the Scorpius-Centaurus association Diehl R., Lang M. G., Martin P. et al. Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 522, id.A51 (2010) Highlight article in "Astronomy & Astrophysics: Radioactive ²⁶Al from the Scorpius-Centaurus association
Press releases :
	ESA press release
Links :
	INTEGRAL Picture of the Month December 2010
Contact :
		Prof. Dr. Roland Diehl Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching phone: +49 89 30000-3850 email: rod@mpe.mpg.de
		Dr. Hannelore Hämmerle Press Officer Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik phone: +49 89 30000-3980 email: hanneh@mpe.mpg.de

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Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik

INTEGRAL helps unravel the tumultuous recent history of the solar neighbourhood

Max-Planck-Institut
für extraterrestrische Physik