Friday, January 28, 2011

APOD 3.2



The red "ripples" seen in the Large Magellanic Cloud are thought to be remnants of a large supernova 160,000 light years away.  The red ring is about 23 light years across, but it is rapidly expanding at aproximately 5,000 km/s, or 11,000 mph.  The star that caused this was most likely a white dwarf star.  This picture was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and the red parts of the image represent hydrogen gas.  This event should have been seen on Earth 400 years ago, but there are no records of this ever happening.  Astronomers are still theorizing what caused the ripples and why people on Earth did not see the supernova.

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