Science Art: At the edge of the blast, Hubble Space Telescope, 2020.

15 November 2020 grant Featured, Science Art 0

Scientific illustration from the Hubble Space Telescope of a shockwave in space - a small section of the Cygnus supernova.
Scientific illustration from the Hubble Space Telescope of a shockwave in space - a small section of the Cygnus supernova.

Scientific illustration from the Hubble Space Telescope of a shockwave in space - a small section of the Cygnus supernova.Click to embiggen

From the ESA Image Gallery, dated 28 Aug 2020, comes an image of a portion of the Cygnus supernova, a blast wave 2400 light-years distant from a dying star 20 times larger than our Sun. It blew up 20,000 years ago, and is still traveling 350 kilometres per second, or around 784,000 mph. The twisting ribbon is caused by the stuff ejected from the star slamming into the low-density dust and gas of interstellar space.

ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Blair; CC BY 4.0; Acknowledgement: Leo Shatz