NASA’s James Webb Orbiting Telescope captured an amazing photo of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, formed by a stellar explosion that was visible from Earth 340 years ago.
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Cassiopeia A is the youngest known remnant of an exploding massive star in our galaxy, making it a unique object to observe.
The remnant of Cassiopeia A covers an area of space about 10 light years in size and is located at a distance of 11 thousand light years from us in the constellation Cassiopeia.
Cassiopeia A is the best opportunity to look at the field of exploded star debris and conduct a kind of “star section” to understand what type of star it was before and how it exploded, scientists say.
The bright colors of the new image of Cassiopeia A, which converts infrared light to visible light, contain a lot of scientific information that scientists are just starting to analyze:
- on the outer side of the bubble, especially at the top and left, there are curtains of material that looks orange and red due to the emission of warm dust. These are the places where ejected material from an exploding star crashes into the surrounding circumstellar gas and dust;
- inside this outer shell are motley threads of a bright pink color, dotted with clots and nodules. This is the material of the star itself, luminous thanks to a mixture of various heavy elements such as oxygen, argon and neon, as well as dust emissions;
- stellar material can also be seen as fainter patches near the interior of the cavity;
- most prominent is the loop, depicted in green, which extends across the right side of the central cavity. Scientists have named it the Green Monster, after the famous wall of the same name located at the Fengway baseball stadium in Boston. Its shape and complexity are unexpected and difficult to understand, scientists emphasize.
Supernovae like the one that formed Cassiopeia A are critical to life as we know it. They distribute elements such as the calcium in our bones and the iron in our blood into interstellar space, creating new generations of stars and planets.
By understanding the process of exploding stars, we are reading our own origin story, scientists say.
The curvature of the Universe “excavated” a distant galaxy (PHOTO)
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.