NASA says it has put to rest any lingering doubts about the identity of the first recorded supernova, described in the Chinese historical work
Book of the Later Han as having taken place in 185 A.D.
As strongly suspected by observations made by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton Observatory in 2006, the "guest star" sighted by Chinese astronomers 1,826 years ago is, indeed, the rather prosaically named RCW 86.
© NASAData from all four space telescopes were combined to produce this image of RCW 86 (click to enlarge)
One scientist studying the supernova remnants in 2006, Jacco Vink of the University of Utrecht, said in 2006: "I think it is very interesting that we can now say with some confidence, but not absolute certainty, that RCW 86 is the remnant of A.D. 185."
NASA now says that all doubt has been removed. New observations made by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, better know as WISE, have not only confirmed the earlier suspicions, but have determined that RCW 86 is a Type 1a supernova.