January 5, 2012 Celestial Pom-Pom

[CaliforniaMama]

I am always amazed at the artistry of space.

This is the Tycho supernova remnant.

The puffy cloud of debris is all that's left of a massive star that exploded some 13,000 light-years away. Light from the powerful blast reached Earth in 1572, making the object briefly visible to the naked eye, even during the day.

The new composite picture shows low-energy x-rays in red and high-energy x-rays in blue. It also reveals, for the first time, bright x-ray stripes—seen in white along the right edge of the remnant—supporting theories that supernovae are sources of high-speed particles known as cosmic rays.

(Find out why the Tycho remnant is also sometimes called a zombie star.)

Image courtesy CXC/NASA
via National Geographic