The new Hubble image shows sheets and filaments of debris from a massive star that exploded as a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby, small companion galaxy to the Milky Way, and whose light would have reached Earth thousands of years ago. The filamentary material will eventually be recycled into building new generations of stars in the dwarf galaxy. Our own Sun and planets are constructed from similar debris of supernovae that exploded in the Milky Way billions of years ago.
This Hubble image shows DEM L 190, a young supernova remnant in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / S. Kulkarni / Y. Chu.
DEM L 190 is one of the brightest supernova remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Otherwise known as N49, SNR J052559-660453, HD 271255 or RASS 207, it lies 160,000 light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation of Dorado.
DEM L 190 is roughly 5,000 years old and approximately 75 light-years across.
It has million-degree gas in its center but cooler gas at the outer parts, between 8,000 and 300,000 K.
The core of the original star, which lies deep within this cloud of gases, is a neutron star that is spinning at the fast speed of one revolution every eight seconds.
This neutron star produced several subsequent gamma-ray emission events, and is now recognized as a soft gamma-ray repeater.
“The color image of DEM L 190 was created with data from two different astronomical investigations, using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), one o the retired instruments on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope,” NASA astronomers explained.
“This instrument has since been replaced by the more powerful Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), but during its operational lifetime it contributed to cutting-edge science and produced a series of stunning public outreach images.”
“The first of the two WFPC2 investigations used DEM L 190 as a natural laboratory in which to study the interaction of supernova remnants and the interstellar medium, the tenuous mixture of gas and dust that lies between stars.”
“In the second project, astronomers turned to Hubble to pinpoint the origin of a soft gamma-ray repeater, an enigmatic object lurking in DEM L 190 which repeatedly emits high-energy bursts of gamma rays.”
“This is not the first image of DEM L 190 to be released to the public — a previous Hubble portrait of this supernova remnant was published in 2003,” they noted.
“The new image incorporates additional data and improved image processing techniques, making this spectacular celestial fireworks display even more striking!”
