Photo of the day: on the edge of a supernova blast

Photo of the day: on the edge of a supernova blast

From the board of the orbiting telescope “Hubble” (NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope) came a new amazing picture of space. The image was published on the website of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

photo of the day

The photo captures a structure that resembles a veil spread against the background of the starry sky. In fact, Hubble captured a small portion of the blast wave from a supernova in the constellation Cygnus, about 2,400 light-years away.

A supernova explosion is a phenomenon during which a star sharply increases its brightness. Such an explosion is accompanied by the ejection of a significant mass of matter from the outer shell of the star into interstellar space. During the explosion, the supernova envelope scatters in all directions, forming an expanding shock wave at a tremendous speed, which forms the supernova remnant.

The observed explosion occurred between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. At the same time, the mass of the star was about 20 times greater than our Sun. The supernova remnant has expanded about 60 light-years from the center, and the velocity of the shock wave reaches 350 km / s.