The celestial Christmas ball is actually the remnant of a supernova

The celestial Christmas ball is actually the remnant of a supernova

The graceful shell of a hot plasma that floats on top of a diamond dome is all that remains of a star that exploded as a supernova 600 light years ago.

The supernova remnant, called SNR B0519-69.0, is more than 150,000 light-years from Earth in a nearby dwarf galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud.

This image combines the visible light of the Hubble Space Telescope and an X-ray image taken with the Chandra near-Earth telescope.

The red-hot plasma emits X-rays that were captured by Chandra and highlighted in blue. The thin red glowing lines are the hydrogen envelope of the supernova remnant captured in visible light by Hubble.

The bubble supernova has more than 23 light-years across and continues to expand at a speed of 18 million kilometers per hour.

Comments (0)
Search