Abstract
Supernova explosions mark the end points of stellar evolution, releasing large amounts of material and energy into the interstellar medium. In our Galaxy the expected rate of supernovae is about one in every fifty years or so, although it is only the relatively nearby ones that are expected to be visible optically, due to obscuration. Over the last two thousand years or so there are historical records of nine Galactic supernovae. The majority of these records are from East Asia (i.e. China, Japan and Korea), although the most recent historical supernovae have European records, and there are a variety of Arabic records also available for some events. Here I review these records of the historical supernovae, and the modern observations of the supernova remnants that they have produced.
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Acknowledgements
It is a pleasure to thank Professor F. Richard Stephenson for collaborating with me on a variety of studies of historical supernovae and their remnants. This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services and Chandra public archive, plus the NRAO VLA Archive Survey Images web service.
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Green, D.A. (2015). Historical Supernova Explosions in Our Galaxy and Their Remnants. In: Orchiston, W., Green, D., Strom, R. (eds) New Insights From Recent Studies in Historical Astronomy: Following in the Footsteps of F. Richard Stephenson. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, vol 43. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07614-0_7
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