File:STIS Chemically Analyzes the Ring Around Supernova 1987a (1997-14-479).tiff
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Summary
[edit]DescriptionSTIS Chemically Analyzes the Ring Around Supernova 1987a (1997-14-479).tiff |
English: These images from the Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) provide a new and unprecedented look at one of the most unique and complex structures in the universe – a light-year wide ring of glowing gas around supernova 1987A, the nearest stellar explosion in 400 years, which occurred in February 1987.
The STIS long-slit spectrograph viewed the entire ring system, dissecting its light and producing a detailed image of the ring in each of its component colors. Each color represents light from specific elements in the ring's gasses, including oxygen (single green ring), nitrogen and hydrogen (triple orange rings), and sulfur (double red rings). The ratio of the ring's brightness in different colors, emanating from the same elements, gives a measure of the concentration of the gasses. The light from different elements also identifies gasses at different temperatures. By dismantling the ring into its different puzzle pieces – its component elements – astronomers hope to put together a picture of stellar process and physics which created the ring. The ring formed 30,000 years before the star exploded and so is a fossil record of the final stages of the star's existence. The light from the supernova heated the gas in the ring so that it now glows at temperatures from 5,000 to 25,000 degrees Kelvin. Supernova 1987A is located 167,000 light-years away from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud. |
Date | 12 May 1997 (upload date) |
Source | STIS Chemically Analyzes the Ring Around Supernova 1987a |
Author | STIS images: George Sonneborn (GSFC) and NASA; WFPC image: Jason Pun (NOAO) and SINS Collaboration, and NASA |
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Keywords InfoField | Supernovae; Stars; Multiwavelength |
Licensing
[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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Width | 1,136 px |
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Height | 1,060 px |
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Compression scheme | LZW |
Pixel composition | RGB |
Orientation | Normal |
Number of components | 3 |
Number of rows per strip | 2 |
Horizontal resolution | 150 dpi |
Vertical resolution | 150 dpi |
Data arrangement | chunky format |