Hubble Space Telescope | Hubble Chronicles Brightening of Ring around an Exploded Star @hubblespacetelescope | Uploaded May 2019 | Updated October 2024, 17 hours ago.
This time-lapse video sequence of Hubble Space Telescope images reveals dramatic changes in a ring of material around the exploded star Supernova 1987A.
The images, taken from 1994 to 2016, show the effects of a shock wave from the supernova blast smashing into the ring. The ring begins to brighten as the shock wave hits it. The ring is about one light-year across.
Discovered in 1987, Supernova 1987A is the closest observed supernova to Earth since 1604. The exploded star resides 163,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.
Read the news release: hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2017-08
This time-lapse video sequence of Hubble Space Telescope images reveals dramatic changes in a ring of material around the exploded star Supernova 1987A.
The images, taken from 1994 to 2016, show the effects of a shock wave from the supernova blast smashing into the ring. The ring begins to brighten as the shock wave hits it. The ring is about one light-year across.
Discovered in 1987, Supernova 1987A is the closest observed supernova to Earth since 1604. The exploded star resides 163,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.
Read the news release: hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2017-08
![M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy [UltraHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/k0m1isyRX-U/hqdefault.jpg "M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy [UltraHD]
This animation shows the Messier 101 (Pinwheel) Galaxy, with simulated rotation, in visible, then infrared, then X-ray, and finally all three combined.
M101 is a comparable in size to the Milky Way. The disk is 100 billion solar masses, and the central bulge of about 3 billion solar masses. M101 is rich is pinkish star forming regions, many of which are very large and bright. Unlike most spiral galaxies, M101spiral shape is notably asymmetrical. This is due to the tidal forces from interactions with its companion galaxies. These gravitational interactions compress interstellar hydrogen gas, which then triggers strong star formation activity in M101s spiral arms.
Video Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, K. Kuntz (JHU), F. Bresolin (University of Hawaii), J. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Lab), J. Mould (NOAO), Y.-H. Chu (University of Illinois, Urbana), and STScI")
![Milky Way Center in Multiple Wavelengths [UltraHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mUQ0yl0w0iQ/hqdefault.jpg "Milky Way Center in Multiple Wavelengths [UltraHD]
Our solar system and sun is located inside a pancake shaped galaxy. Imagine a scale model where the plane of the Milky Way is a DVD, and the central bulge is a ping pong ball glued in the center. It is this narrow plane that we see across the sky on a sufficiently dark night from Earth, from our vantage point inside it. Dust blocks much of our view. But at other wavelengths astronomers can probe the heart of our galaxy.
The center of our Milky Way Galaxy, located 26,000 light-years away, houses a black hole as massive as a million suns, surrounded by very dense nest of stars and bright clouds. The density of stars in the innermost regions of the Milky Way is up to one million times greater than in our portion of the galaxy. This region contains extreme and unusual conditions that can influence the types of stars that reside there. The density of stars and clouds creates streaming patterns. There are large massive star clusters that cannot not be found outside that region. The radiation environment is intense in the galactic center.
The near-infrared image (Hubble) shows the knots of cloud edges and emission that mark the plane of our galaxy. The mid-infrared image (Spitzer) highlights the clouds of gas and dust and star forming regions. The X-ray image (Chandra) tracks the most luminous and powerful stars in the area conspicuously revealing the galactic center region itself - including the million-solar mass black hole at the very hub of our galaxy. In addition, several other X-ray emitting locations can be seen, linked to massive star clusters.
Video: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Image Credits: NASA, ESA, CXC, SSC and STScI")
![HH 901: Pillars in the Carina Nebula [Ultra HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/m_EcoSaqp1U/hqdefault.jpg "HH 901: Pillars in the Carina Nebula [Ultra HD]
Herbig Haro 901 is an immense pillar of gas and dust inside the Carina Nebula, a huge star-forming region in our galaxy. The pillar is several light-years tall and contains a few massive young stars. They shoot out powerful jets that emerge from the cloud. In some cases, the jets create bow-shock patterns similar to the effects of a ship plowing through the ocean. In the visible-light view, very few stars can be seen because the gas and dust block starlight. But in the infrared view, stars become visible and numerous. The visible-light colors emerge from the glow of different gases: oxygen (blue), hydrogen/nitrogen (green), and sulfur (red). The Carina Nebula is approximately 7,500 light years from Earth.
Video: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)")
![Lagoon Nebula: M8 [UltraHD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/nMPaYuJg_P4/hqdefault.jpg "Lagoon Nebula: M8 [UltraHD]
This video compares the colorful Hubble Space Telescope visible-light image of the core of the Lagoon Nebula and a Hubble infrared-light view of the same region.
This visible-light image of the central region of the Lagoon nebula reveals a fantasy landscape of ridges, canyons, pillars, and mountains of gas and dust surrounding a very hot newborn star. When the visible view crossfades into an image taken in near-infrared light, the most obvious difference is the abundance of stars that fill the field of view. Most of them are more distant, background stars located behind the nebula itself. However, some of these pinpricks of light are young stars within the Lagoon Nebula. Only the densest of the gas clouds remain in the infrared view.
Video: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
Optical and Infrared images: NASA, ESA, and STScI")
