A search for fast-moving features in the optical remnant of 3C 58

Red-sensitive plates of the optical remnant of 3C 58 (G130.7 + 3.1), obtained at the prime-focus of the Hale 5 m telescope in 1977 and 1989, have been used to search for rapidly expanding knots of nebular emission. No such nebulosity was found. If the optical nebula represent the expanding shell of a supernova, then its age must be a few thousand years. A more likely alternative is that the nebulosity that is presently visible (which is significantly enriched in nitrogen) represents quasi-stationary circumstellar material that was excited and compressed by passage of the fast-moving shell of a supernova that exploded about 800 years ago.