Even though the spotlight is now on the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope is still sending back amazing images from space. Hubble has now captured the spectacular remnants of a spectacular supernova explosion.
This is what Hubble’s supernova remnants look like
When stars much bigger than our sun run out of fuel and explode in massive supernovae, these events not only cause huge bursts of energy, but also change the environment around them.
When the shockwave from the explosion travels millions of kilometers into space and hits clouds of dust and gas, it creates elaborate and beautiful structures called supernova remnants.
One of the most famous remnants is the Cygnus Loop supernova, a bubble-shaped object about 120 light-years away. Hubble first imaged this remnant in 2020, and now scientists are using Hubble data again to study how these remnants change over time.
Another mysterious discovery from NASA. The James Webb telescope has found signs of extraterrestrial life far away from our planet.
Ravi Sankrit of the Space Telescope Science Institute, lead author of the new study, said in a statement: “When you look at the Hubble images in detail, they are spectacular. They tell us about the density differences that supernova shocks encounter as they travel through space, and the turbulence in the regions behind these shocks.”
The shock is moving at an incredible speed of over 800,000 kilometers per hour. The researchers calculated this by comparing Hubble observations from 2020 and 2001 to see how the shock front expands over time. The results are seen in a time-lapse video on the Hubble website.
The researchers explain that the reason the image looks like a filament is because we see it from the side, like a crumpled sheet. William Blair of Johns Hopkins University said, “You see ripples in the sheet seen from the side, so it looks like twisted strips of light. These ripples occur when the shock wave encounters more or less dense material in the interstellar medium.”
The shape was created by the shock traveling through the interstellar medium, the thin region of dust and gas between star systems. “When we pointed Hubble at the Cygnus Loop, we knew this was the leading edge of a shock front we wanted to study.
When we took the first image and saw this incredible, delicate sliver of light, it was a bonus. We had no idea it would resolve this kind of structure,” says Blair. What do you think? Please don’t forget to share your thoughts with us in the comments.
