Posted on 07/01/2008 8:32:21 AM PDT by Red Badger
This image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago.
Newswise — A delicate ribbon of gas floats eerily in our galaxy. A contrail from an alien spaceship? A jet from a black-hole? Actually this image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago.
On or around May 1, 1006 A.D., observers from Africa to Europe to the Far East witnessed and recorded the arrival of light from what is now called SN 1006, a tremendous supernova explosion caused by the final death throes of a white dwarf star nearly 7,000 light-years away. The supernova was probably the brightest star ever seen by humans, and surpassed Venus as the brightest object in the night time sky, only to be surpassed by the moon. It was visible even during the day for weeks, and remained visible to the naked eye for at least two and a half years before fading away.
It wasn't until the mid-1960s that radio astronomers first detected a nearly circular ring of material at the recorded position of the supernova. The ring was almost 30 arcminutes across, the same angular diameter as the full moon. The size of the remnant implied that the blast wave from the supernova had expanded at nearly 20 million miles per hour over the nearly 1,000 years since the explosion occurred.
In 1976, the first detection of exceedingly faint optical emission of the supernova remnant was reported, but only for a filament located on the northwest edge of the radio ring. A tiny portion of this filament is revealed in detail by the Hubble observation. The twisting ribbon of light seen by Hubble corresponds to locations where the expanding blast wave from the supernova is now sweeping into very tenuous surrounding gas.
The hydrogen gas heated by this fast shock wave emits radiation in visible light. Hence, the optical emission provides astronomers with a detailed "snapshot" of the actual position and geometry of the shock front at any given time. Bright edges within the ribbon correspond to places where the shock wave is seen exactly edge on to our line of sight.
Today we know that SN 1006 has a diameter of nearly 60 light-years, and it is still expanding at roughly 6 million miles per hour. Even at this tremendous speed, however, it takes observations typically separated by years to see significant outward motion of the shock wave against the grid of background stars. In the Hubble image as displayed, the supernova would have occurred far off the lower right corner of the image, and the motion would be toward the upper left.
SN 1006 resides within our Milky Way Galaxy. Located more than 14 degrees off the plane of the galaxy's disk, there is relatively little confusion with other foreground and background objects in the field when trying to study this object. In the Hubble image, many background galaxies (orange extended objects) far off in the distant universe can be seen dotting the image. Most of the white dots are foreground or background stars in our Milky Way galaxy.
This image is a composite of hydrogen-light observations taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in February 2006 and Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 observations in blue, yellow-green, and near-infrared light taken in April 2008. The supernova remnant, visible only in the hydrogen-light filter was assigned a red hue in the Heritage color image.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Acknowledgment: W. Blair (Johns Hopkins University)
For images and more information about SN 1006, visit:
http://hubblesite.org/news/2008/22 http://heritage.stsci.edu/2008/22
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) and is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Md. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) conducts Hubble science operations. The institute is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., Washington, DC.
Beautiful.
New desktop wallpaper.
Ooooh ahhhhhh!!
Maybe I’m picking nits, but the event actually occurred 8000 years ago, it was just observed 1000 years ago. If people can’t understand the concept of light years, how can we let them decide whether or not there is global climate change going on?
Too close.
Science (or history or civics for that matter) is not being taught anymore in public schools. The history of diverrrrrrrrsity and racial intollllllerance and sexxxxxxxxxxxxism is being taught, however.
They wrote it incorrectly not just once, like a typo, but several times!
The size of the remnant implied that the blast wave from the supernova had expanded at nearly 20 million miles per hour over the nearly 1,000 years since the explosion occurred.
I wonder if whoever wrote this is also writing on the subject of "global warming"?
Yep, our science reporting is in good hands!
Nowhere does the article say that the supernova took place 1000 years ago.
It says that the ring of gas traveled x distance in the 1000 years since the explosion occurred, which is correct, because what we're observing IS where the gas ring was 1000 years after the explosion. The fact that we're observing it 7000 years after the event doesn't change that.
Oops, I should have said that we’re observing it 8000 years after, not 7000.
ok then smartypants- what is the correct reason?
(LOL, seriously, I want to know!)
Okay, I'm curious. Why is the night sky black? I assume it's because there's no atmosphere in space to scatter the light.
Apparently the Hubble main camera has been offline for several years, meaning that these great Hubble images are at least 2-3 years old, not fresh. Not that it matters for events of 10,000 years ago.
Now, pass the Fritos.
For years astronomers thought that the dust absorbed the light. Strangely Edgar Allen Poe was the first person in history to solve the paradox. In his Eureka: A Prose Poem he wrote:
Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would present us an uniform luminosity, like that displayed by the Galaxy -- since there could be absolutely no point, in all that background, at which would not exist a star. The only mode, therefore, in which, under such a state of affairs, we could comprehend the voids which our telescopes find in innumerable directions, would be by supposing the distance of the invisible background so immense that no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all. That this may be so, who shall venture to deny? I maintain, simply, that we have not even the shadow of a reason for believing that it is so.
This is the key to the correct answer. The universe is not infinitely old. There was a Genesis [as an event, not necessarily as outlined in the Bible]. There is a finite cutoff to the light that reaches our eyes. Light from the most distant stars has not yet had time to reach us. Cosomologist Edward Harrison was the first to discover the relationship between Poe and Olbers’ paradox and wrote, “When I first read Poe’s words I was astounded.”
You got it! Nicely done, with far less words than I.
Indeed, but I'd not been previously aware of the connection to Poe. Thanks for the info!
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