If anything the Death Star’s ring should have been equatorial, since that’s the only plane of asymmetry, and Alderaan’s should have been perpendicular to the Death Star’s ray, since the planet’s rotation would be a negligible factor. So ILM basically managed to get things backward.

You and your friend might find this site interesting: http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/

A quick search of the literature turned up no known pulsars (or neutron stars) related to SNR 0509. Also, I found no mention of a central plerion (such as that seen in the Crab Nebula). It seems likely that the “central nebulosity” is indeed a foreground-background object seen in projection as MTU noted. Given the number of background galaxies visible in the frame, I’d go with a background galaxy (also note the sharp, reddish nucleus (AGN?) and the “bluer” amorphous region around it). Just a guess.

WRT the progenitor of SNR 0509, formation of a black hole seems plausible.

@18. Dr Jeremy Greenwood :

@6. Messier Tidy Upper. …any known central or nearby pulsar…
What’s that pink spidery thing in the middle of the supernovenated image? Is that the stellar remnant?

Quite possibly so. It could very well be that, but then, alternatively, it might potentially only be an unrelated line-of-sight co-incidence foreground or background object. So I don’t know for sure & would merely be guessing.

Can anyone further enlighten us all on that central nebulosity’s exact nature, please?

The discovery was made using the 4m Blanco telescope at Cerro Tololo back in 2005. Here’s a link to a video showing the position of SNR 0509 in the LMC (this is an X-ray image of the SNR) and a short movie of the moving light echoes: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/snr0509/E509_sm_web.mov

Pretty amazing stuff!

I’m making this claim in opposition to a friend who says that some movie would try to get it right and since all movies show the ring at a dramatic or dangerous angle that’s how they must go.

IIRC, B^2FH estimates that the Earth and Sun formed from the remnants of a supernova that blew up about 6.4^10^9 years ago. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C2%B2FH ) The paper itself is available online for free as well.

I’m pretty sure there have been substantial efforts recently to locate/identify/ the Sun’s natal cluster, as well as ‘sister’ stars formed from the same cloud. I thought they had had some small successes, but don’t remember details. Maybe the BA knows…?

So space is really just a giant Lawrence Welk show?

“And a one, and a two, and…”

Something similar can happen to humans, too…..

J/P=?
“Hey, you kids! Get out of my stellar system!”

“I’m glad you asked! OK, so I asked, but if I were you I would’ve asked that. And I’m me and I did. “

Phil, http://www.treelobsters.com has a post with an appearance by a certain book you might recognize…

supernovenate.

Didn’t you mean “ensupernovenate?” there?

@1. MarkW : Forever? I could be mistaken but I’m pretty sure the star in question here could only blow that bubble once!

@2. Josh :

Where is the white dwarf/neutron star/black hole that was left from that supernova?

It would be astounding to find that I agree but, unfortunately, there’s a few big problems here – the vast spans of time and distance issue you’ve noted already but I’ll expand on just slightly with this quote here :

“Since our Sun was formed more than 4 billion years ago, it has travelled around the Galaxy 16 times.”

Source : “Two of the Milky Way’s Spiral Arms Go Missing” NASA e-newsletter news release 2008-June-4th.

Another obstacle here is that the remains of the supernova – a black hole or neutron star – would have long since cooled and dimmed to a point where finding it is probably exceedingly unlikely. Chances are its long since spun down and it may also perhaps been ejected from our galaxy via an asymetric explosion giving it a kinetic kick away in one direction or, perhaps, gravitational encounters could have caused it to fall inwards and just possibly even have meant it has already merged with the central supermassive black hole at our Milky Way’s core.

Futhermore, we don’t know what sort of supernova it was and not all supernovae leave “stellar corpse” remnants – if that precursor star was a type Ia “white dwarf” supernova (unlikely given the timescale but can’t be ruled out entirely I think) :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_Ia_supernova

or if it was a (more likely?) “metal poor supermassive” pair-instability supernova :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair-instability_supernova

Then the star in question here would have been totally and utterly destroyed leaving no remanant but dissipating gas and a shockwave for its cosmic tombstone.

Plus, as far as I’m aware, we don’t really know how distant the star that triggered the proto-solar nebula to collapse was from our Sun’s natal coccoon nor, I think, exactly how long the process of nebular collapse and starbirth (*Sun* birth!) really took.

So given all these uncertainties I very much doubt we’ll ever find a supernova remnant that can be definitively traced back as the trigger exploder that caused the nebula to collapse that led to the birth of our daytime star. (Sorry to be a wet blanket again here.)

However, I would love to be proven wrong about this!

PS. Thinking Supernova types and remnants – do we know what type of supernova produced this one – SNR 0509 – & whether it is linked to any known central or nearby pulsar /magnetar / black hole?