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NASA Zooms In On Massive Supernova Explosion

NASA Zooms In On Massive Supernova Explosion

NASA Zooms In On Massive Supernova Explosion
28 September 2015

Some time around the dawn of recorded human history (approximately 8,000 years ago), the night sky will have contained a particularly bright star - glowing with the same intensity as our moon.

This interstellar disco was caused by the explosion of a star some 20-times the size of our own sun - a supernova of such magnitude that its debris is still lighting up a massive section of the universe all these millennia later.

Now, NASA's Hubble Telescope has zoomed in on this cosmic bombsite, the Veil Nebula. At 110 light-years across, the array of colours is created by the "fast-moving blast wave from the ancient explosion [that] is plowing into a wall of cool, denser interstellar gas, emitting light", explain's the Hubble site. "The nebula lies along the edge of a large bubble of low-density gas that was blown into space by the dying star prior to its self-detonation."

Have a browse through the images and video tour to see the devastation, and keep your fingers crossed humanity isn't still around to witness our own Sun explode. 

(Images: Hubble/NASA)