Following the previous month, another discovery from the infrared mission AKARI is introduced. This is from the young supernova remnant Cassiopeia A in our galaxy. The figure shows that AKARI detected a Carbon monoxide line emission from the remnant. This indicates a large amount of the molecular surviving in the energetic environment since the explosion 330 years ago. This is unexpected and surprised researchers.

This result was obtained by Rho, Onaka, Cami, and Reach from United State and Japan. The original paper can be found here (ApJ Letter, 2012) .

Takayuki Tamura (ISAS/JAXA) Feb. 2012