01-05-2012, 10:14 AM
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#1
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I wonder . . .
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: The Left Coast, a pretty good place to be.
Posts: 1,278
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January 5, 2012 Celestial Pom-Pom
I am always amazed at the artistry of space.
This is the Tycho supernova remnant.
Quote:
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.
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(Find out why the Tycho remnant is also sometimes called a zombie star.)
Image courtesy CXC/NASA
via National Geographic
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