Space scientists have released jaw-dropping scenes capturing a star\u2019s violent death \u2014 recorded over more than two and a half decades.<\/p>\n
Presented in a spectacular new video from NASA\u2019s Chandra X-ray Observatory, it unveils, frame by frame, cosmic wreckage 17,000 light-years from Earth.<\/p>\n
The scenes track the furious expansion of Kepler\u2019s Supernova Remnant, the glowing remains of a star first spotted in 1604 by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler.<\/p>\n
Once a white dwarf, the doomed star exploded after pulling in too much material from a companion, triggering a Type Ia supernova \u2014 one of the brightest and most powerful events in the cosmos.<\/p>\n
The scenes track the furious expansion of Kepler\u2019s Supernova Remnant, the glowing remains of a star first spotted in 1604 by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler. NASA\/CXC\/SAO\/Pan-STARR \/ SWNS<\/p>\n
This is what the star looked like in 2004. NASA\/CXC\/SAO\/Pan-STARR \/ SWNS<\/p>\n
This is what the star looked like in 2006, according to NASA. NASA\/CXC\/SAO\/Pan-STARR \/ SWNS<\/p>\n
The fastest threads of debris are racing through space at nearly 14 million miles per hour \u2014 about two per cent of the speed of light. NASA\/CXC\/SAO\/Pan-STARR \/ SWNS<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plot of Kepler\u2019s story is just now beginning to unfold,\u201d said Jessye Gassel of George Mason University. \u201cIt\u2019s remarkable that we can watch, almost in real time, the remains of this shattered star crash into material it flung out centuries ago.\u201d NASA\/CXC\/SAO\/Pan-STARR \/ SWNS<\/p>\n
Now, using Chandra data from 2000, 2004, 2006, 2014, and 2025, scientists have stitched together the longest time-lapse ever made by the X-ray telescope, revealing how the blast wave continues to tear through the surrounding gas 17,000 light-years from Earth.<\/p>\n
The fastest threads of debris are racing through space at nearly 14 million miles per hour \u2014 about two per cent of the speed of light \u2014 while slower material, battering into denser gas, crawls at a mere four million mph. <\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s Chandra X-ray Observatory (illustrated above) captured the cosmic wreckage of a star 17,000 light-years from Earth. NSF’s NOIRLab\/NASA\/CXC\/J.Vaughan \/ SWNS<\/p>\n
These contrasting speeds help astronomers map the structure of the interstellar medium surrounding the detonation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plot of Kepler\u2019s story is just now beginning to unfold,\u201d said Jessye Gassel of George Mason University, who led the work presented this week at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Phoenix. \u201cIt\u2019s remarkable that we can watch, almost in real time, the remains of this shattered star crash into material it flung out centuries ago.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Space scientists have released jaw-dropping scenes capturing a star\u2019s violent death \u2014 recorded over more than two and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":499546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[916,159,933,783,4810,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-499545","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-nasa","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-scientists","11":"tag-space","12":"tag-stars","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115855349935594652","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}