About the product
Remains of a supernova, called Kepler's supernova remnant, first seen 400 years ago by sky watchers, including astronomer Johannes Kepler. The combined image unveils a bubble-shaped shroud of gas and dust that is 14light-years wide and is expanding at 4 million miles per hour (2,000 kilometersper second). Observations highlight distinct features of thesupernova remnant, a fast-moving shell of iron-rich material from the explodedstar, surrounded by an expanding shock wave that is sweeping up interstellar gasand dust. Each color in this image represents a different region of the electromagneticspectrum, from X-rays to infrared light. The X-ray and infrared data cannot be seen with the human eye. By color-coding those data and combining themwith visible-light view, astronomers are presenting a more completepicture of the supernova remnant. Visible-light images (colored yellow) reveal where the supernova shock wave is slamming into the densest regions of surrounding gas.The bright glowing knots are dense clumps from instabilities that form behind the shock wave .Data also show thin filaments of gas that look like rippled sheets seen edge-on. These filaments reveal where the shock wave is encountering lower-density, more uniform interstellar material. Microscopic dust particles (colored red) that havebeen heated by the supernova shock wave. The dust re-radiates the shock wave'senergy as infrared light. Regions of very hot gas, and extremely high-energyparticles. The hottest gas (higher-energy X-rays, colored blue) is locatedprimarily in the regions directly behind the shock front. These regions also align with the faint rim of glowingmaterial. The X-rays from the region on the lower left(colored blue) may be dominated by extremely high-energy electrons that wereproduced by the shock wave and are radiating at radio through X-ray wavelengthsas they spiral in the intensified magnetic field behind the shock front. CoolerX-ray gas (lower-energy X-rays, colored green) resides in a thick interior shelland marks the location of heated material expelled from the exploded star. Kepler's supernova, the last such object seen to explode in our Milky Waygalaxy, resides about 13,000 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus.
