Skip to main content

Hubble investigates the gorgeous remnants of a supernova

Some of the most dramatic events in the universe are the deaths of massive stars. When stars far larger than our sun run out of fuel and explode in huge supernovas, these events not only let out huge blasts of energy but also change the environment around them. As the shockwave from the explosion travels outward millions of miles into space and slams into clouds dust and gas, it can create elaborate and beautiful structures called supernova remnants.

One of the most famous remnants is the Cygnus Loop, a bubble-shaped object which is around 120 light-years across. Hubble imaged the remnant in 2020, and now scientists are using this Hubble data to study how these remnants change over time.

The Cygnus Loop nebula forms a bubble-like shape that is about 120 light-years in diameter.
Though a doomed star exploded some 20,000 years ago, its tattered remnants continue racing into space at breakneck speeds – and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has caught the action. The nebula, called the Cygnus Loop, forms a bubble-like shape that is about 120 light-years in diameter. The distance to its center is approximately 2,600 light-years. The entire nebula has a width of six full Moons as seen on the sky. NASA, ESA, Ravi Sankrit (STScI)

“Hubble is the only way that we can actually watch what’s happening at the edge of the bubble with such clarity,” said Ravi Sankrit of the Space Telescope Science Institute, lead author of the new research, in a statement. “The Hubble images are spectacular when you look at them in detail. They’re telling us about the density differences encountered by the supernova shocks as they propagate through space, and the turbulence in the regions behind these shocks.”

Recommended Videos

The shock is traveling at an incredible speed of over half a million miles per hour, which the researchers could calculate by comparing Hubble observations from 2020 and 2001 to see the shock front expanding over time. The results can be seen in a time-lapse video on the Hubble website. One surprising finding is that the shock hasn’t slowed down at all in this time.

The image looks like a filament because we are seeing it from the side, like a wrinkled sheet, the researchers explain. “You’re seeing ripples in the sheet that is being seen edge-on, so it looks like twisted ribbons of light,” said William Blair of Johns Hopkins University. “Those wiggles arise as the shock wave encounters more or less dense material in the interstellar medium.”

The shape is created by the shock moving through the interstellar medium, which is the thin region of dust and gas between star systems. “When we pointed Hubble at the Cygnus Loop we knew that this was the leading edge of a shock front, which we wanted to study. When we got the initial picture and saw this incredible, delicate ribbon of light, well, that was a bonus. We didn’t know it was going to resolve that kind of structure,” said Blair.

The research is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
Hubble is turning 35: Here are its best images from the last year
This new image showcases NGC 346, a dazzling young star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud.

This month sees a very special birthday: the 35th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope. The venerable old space telescope was launched on April 24, 1990, so now is the perfect time to celebrate this beloved instrument and the contributions it continues to make to science and our understanding of space.

Even though newer telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope are more powerful than Hubble, it still fulfills an important role as an optical space telescope -- meaning that it looks primarily in the same wavelengths that the human eye can see. Webb looks in the infrared portion of the spectrum, so by working together the two telescopes can get a fuller view of an object than either could get on their own.

Read more
James Webb captures gorgeous image of a Cosmic Tornado
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope observed Herbig-Haro 49/50, an outflow from a nearby still-forming star, in high-resolution near- and mid-infrared light with the NIRCam and MIRI instruments. The intricate features of the outflow, represented in reddish-orange color, provide detailed clues about how young stars form and how their jet activity affects the environment around them. A chance alignment in this direction of the sky provides a beautiful juxtaposition of this nearby Herbig-Haro object (located within our Milky Way) with a more distant, face-on spiral galaxy in the background.

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured another stunning image of space, this time showing the dramatic scenes around a baby star. Very young stars can throw off powerful jets of hot gas as they form, and when these jets collide with nearby dust and gas they form striking structures called Herbig-Haro objects.

This new image shows Herbig-Haro 49/50, located nearby to Earth at just 630 light-years away in the constellation Chamaeleon. Scientists have observed this object before, using the Spitzer Space Telescope, and they named the object the "Cosmic Tornado" because of its cone-like shape. To show the impressive powers of James Webb to capture objects like this one in exquisite detail, you can compare the Spitzer image from 2006 and the new James Webb image.

Read more
Beautiful Hubble image shows the stunning colors of the Veil Nebula
In this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, Hubble once again lifts the veil on a famous — and frequently photographed — supernova remnant: the Veil Nebula.

One of the most famous and beautiful cosmic sights shows its colors in this new image from the Hubble Space Telescope. The Veil Nebula is the remnant of a massive star which exploded in a supernova 10,000 years ago, leaving behind a striking structure of dust and gas that has a delicate draped shape from which the object gets its name.

The star which created the nebula was huge, at 20 times the mass of the sun, and its explosion was so epic it would have been brighter than Venus in the sky over Earth, despite being located 2,400 light-years away. Over time, the effects of that explosion have continued to spread, creating the structure we see today.

Read more