Astronomy Picture of the Day

NASA ^ | 6/30/10 | NASA

[sig226]

Fast Gas Bullet from Cosmic Blast N49
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/S. Park et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI/UIUC/Y. H. Chu & R. Williams et al.

Explanation: What is that strange blue blob on the far right? No one is sure, but it might be a speeding remnant of a powerful supernova that was unexpectedly lopsided. Scattered debris from supernova explosion N49 lights up the sky in this gorgeous composited image based on data from the Chandra and Hubble Space Telescopes. Glowing visible filaments, shown in yellow, and X-ray hot gas, shown in blue, span about 30 light-years in our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. Light from the original exploding star reached Earth thousands of years ago, but N49 also marks the location of another energetic outburst -- an extremely intense blast of gamma-rays detected by satellites about 30 years ago on 1979 March 5. The source of the March 5th Event is now attributed to a magnetar - a highly magnetized, spinning neutron star also born in the ancient stellar explosion which created supernova remnant N49. The magnetar, visible near the top of the image, hurtles through the supernova debris cloud at over 70 thousand kilometers per hour. The blue blob on the far right, however, might have been expelled asymmetrically just as a massive star was exploding. If so, it now appears to be moving over 7 million kilometers per hour.

[sig226]

[brytlea]

The Borg! The Borg is coming!

[left that other site]

Fast Gas Bullet?

Would You care to elaborate on that? LOL?

[fieldmarshaldj]

They’ve already here, they’re called Democrats.

[fieldmarshaldj]

They’re already here, they’re called Democrats.

[brytlea]

I can’t remember what happens to those who don’t get absorbed....

[fieldmarshaldj]

They get called racist.

[brytlea]

Drat, that’s the worst thing ever!

[brytlea]

Drat, that’s the worst thing ever!

[AZ .44 MAG]

Say 10 light years downrange and still 7 million kilometers per hour. I wonder what the “muzzle velocity” was.

[The_Victor]

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth twentieth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water... Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us."

[sig226]

Wendy’s chili with cheese on it. You want to be in another galaxy after I eat that.

[sig226]

I fear no alien invaders. I am prepared. If you liked the seawater at the end of Day of the Triffids, or the Indian Love Call in Mars Attacks, you should see what happens re: post 13.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from June 30, 2010. Thanks sig226.

What is that strange blue blob on the far right? No one is sure, but it might be a speeding remnant of a powerful supernova that was unexpectedly lopsided.