Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Hubble captures the beautiful aftermath of a supernova explosion

Georgina Torbet
By

Supernovas might spell the end for the star they happen to, but they aren’t only destructive phenomena. When a star approaches the end of its life and runs out of fuel, it explodes in an enormous outpouring of energy, leaving behind a small, dense core that becomes a black hole or a neutron star. This explosion, though destructive on an epic scale, can also leave behind a beautiful remnant created by the explosion’s shock wave.

A image recently released by the Hubble Space Telescope team shows one such supernova remnant, called DEM L249. Captured by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument and located in the constellation of Mensa, this delicate structure is formed from dust and gas ejected outward from the star’s location by the force of the blast.

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the tattered remnant of a supernova — a titanic explosion marking the end of the life of a dying star. This object — known as DEM L249 — is thought to have been created by a Type 1a supernova during the death throes of a white dwarf. While white dwarfs are usually stable, they can slowly accrue matter if they are part of a binary star system. This accretion of matter continues until the white dwarf reaches a critical mass and undergoes a catastrophic supernova explosion, ejecting a vast amount of material into space in the process.
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the tattered remnant of a supernova — a titanic explosion marking the end of the life of a dying star. ESA/Hubble & NASA, Y. Chu

“This object — known as DEM L249 — is thought to have been created by a Type 1a supernova during the death throes of a white dwarf,” the Hubble scientists write. “While white dwarfs are usually stable, they can slowly accrue matter if they are part of a binary star system. This accretion of matter continues until the white dwarf reaches a critical mass and undergoes a catastrophic supernova explosion, ejecting a vast amount of material into space in the process.”

This remnant is located around 160,000 light-years from Earth in a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way called the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Researchers use Hubble to look to the LMC to understand more about star evolution, as it is located relatively nearby and is not obscured by too much dust.

“The LMC is an ideal natural laboratory where astronomers can study the births, lives, and deaths of stars, as this region is nearby, oriented towards Earth, and contains relatively little light-absorbing interstellar dust,” according to the Hubble team. “The data in this image were gathered by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, and were obtained during a systematic search of the LMC for the surviving companions of white dwarf stars which have gone supernova.”

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
See Webb’s most beautiful image yet of the Pillars of Creation
By combining images of the iconic Pillars of Creation from two cameras aboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, the Universe has been framed in its infrared glory. Webb’s near-infrared image was fused with its mid-infrared image, setting this star-forming region ablaze with new details.
How to see Mars at its brightest at opposition this week
Finder chart for Mars on 8 December.
Hubble captures an open star cluster in a nearby satellite galaxy
Against a backdrop littered with tiny pinpricks of light glint a few, brighter stars. This whole collection is NGC 1858, an open star cluster in the northwest region of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way that boasts an abundance of star-forming regions. NGC 1858 is estimated to be around 10 million years old.clock
How to watch Orion’s return flyby of the moon on Monday
NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft reached a maximum distance of nearly 270,000 miles from Earth during the Artemis I flight test before beginning its journey back toward Earth. Orion captured imagery of the Earth and Moon together from its distant lunar orbit, including this image on Nov. 28, 2022, taken from camera on one of the spacecraft’s solar array wings.
SpaceX launches booster for 11th time, but this time it didn’t return
spacex launch booster 11th time falcon9
Ingenuity takes shortest flight in Martian aviation history
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter.
How to watch SpaceX launch its new Cargo Dragon capsule to ISS
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo capsule lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on the company’s 22nd Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station.
Orion spacecraft enters distant retrograde orbit around the moon
View of the Moon seen from ESA's European Service Module that is powering NASA's Orion spacecraft to the Moon and back, on flight day nine of the Artemis I mission, on 24 November 2022.
Strangely chonky exoplanet has astronomers puzzled
Artist’s conception of a gas giant exoplanet orbiting around a Sun-like star. The young exoplanet HD 114082 b revolves around its Sun-like star within 110 days at a distance of 0.5 astronomical units.
All the science that’s launching to the space station today
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the company’s Dragon cargo spacecraft atop, is raised to a vertical position at NASA Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A on Nov. 21, 2022, in preparation for the 26th commercial resupply services launch to the International Space Station.
Listen to the spooky echoes of a black hole
The black hole in V404 Cygni is actively pulling material away from a companion star — with about half the mass of the Sun — into a disk around the invisible object. A burst of X-rays from the black hole detected in 2015 created the high-energy rings from a phenomenon known as light echoes, where light bounces off of dust clouds in between the system and Earth. In these images, X-rays from Chandra are shown, along with optical data from the Pan-STARRS telescope that depict the stars in the field of view.
Hubble captures a pair of galaxies merging into an unusual ring shape
The galaxy merger Arp-Madore 417-391 steals the spotlight in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The Arp-Madore catalog is a collection of particularly peculiar galaxies spread throughout the southern sky, and includes a collection of subtly interacting galaxies as well as more spectacular colliding galaxies. Arp-Madore 417-391, which lies around 670 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus in the southern celestial hemisphere, is one such galactic collision. The two galaxies were distorted by gravity and twisted into a colossal ring, leaving their cores nestled side by side.
See a stunning image of the Orion nebula stellar nursery
This infrared image of the Orion Nebula features plenty of dust but no stars. In these infrared wavelengths, it’s possible to see hot spots where new stars are forming, while unseen bright, massive stars have carved out caverns of empty space.