Glowing gaseous streamers of red, white, and blue — as well as green and pink — illuminate the heavens like Fourth of July fireworks. The colorful streamers that float across the sky in this photo taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope were created by the universe's biggest firecracker, the titanic supernova explosion of a massive star. The light from the exploding star reached Earth 320 years ago, nearly a century before our United States celebrated its birth with a bang. The dead star's shredded remains are called Cassiopeia A, or "Cas A" for short. Cas A is the youngest known supernova remnant in our Milky Way Galaxy and resides 10,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia, so the star actually blew up 10,000 years before the light reached Earth in the late 1600s.
hubblesite.org에서 퍼온 글입니다. 가보시면 멋진 우주의 바탕화면들을 받으실 수 있어요. 블로그 바탕화면을 Supernova로 바꾸면서 Supernova에 대해 궁금해져서 관련링크를 눌러보니 위의 설명이 나오더군요.
