File:Mysterious Ring Structure around Supernova 1987A (1994-22-158).jpg
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[edit]DescriptionMysterious Ring Structure around Supernova 1987A (1994-22-158).jpg |
English: This striking NASA Hubble Space Telescope picture shows three rings of glowing gas encircling the site of Supernova 1987A, a star which exploded in February 1987. Though all of the rings appear inclined to our view (so that they appear to intersect) they are probably in three different planes. The small bright ring lies in a plane containing the supernova, the two larger rings lie in front and behind it. The rings are a surprise because astronomers expected to see, instead, an hourglass shaped bubble of gas being blown into space by the supernova's progenitor star (based on previous HST observations, and images at lower resolution taken at ground-based observatories). One possibility is that the two rings might be "painted" on the invisible hourglass by a high-energy beam of radiation that is sweeping across the gas, like a searchlight sweeping across clouds. The source of the radiation might be a previously unknown stellar remnant that is a binary companion to the star that exploded in 1987. The supernova is 169,000 light years away, and lies in the dwarf galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud, which can be seen from the southern hemisphere. The image was taken in visible light (hyrdrogen-alpha emission), with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, in February 1994. |
Date | 19 May 1994 (upload date) |
Source | Mysterious Ring Structure around Supernova 1987A |
Author | Credit: Dr. Christopher Burrows, ESA/STScI and NASA |
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[edit]Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA and ESA. NASA Hubble material (and ESA Hubble material prior to 2009) is copyright-free and may be freely used as in the public domain without fee, on the condition that only NASA, STScI, and/or ESA is credited as the source of the material. This license does not apply if ESA material created after 2008 or source material from other organizations is in use. The material was created for NASA by Space Telescope Science Institute under Contract NAS5-26555, or for ESA by the Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre. Copyright statement at hubblesite.org or 2008 copyright statement at spacetelescope.org. For material created by the European Space Agency on the spacetelescope.org site since 2009, use the {{ESA-Hubble}} tag. |
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current | 14:35, 24 February 2024 | 761 × 900 (87 KB) | OptimusPrimeBot (talk | contribs) | #Spacemedia - Upload of https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01EVVMRQVYFJQXMH7JTSJCVSRR.jpg via Commons:Spacemedia |
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JPEG file comment | Ghostscript 24 bit color image dump CREATOR: XV Version 3.00z Rev: 3/7/94 Quality = 75, Smoothing = 0 |
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