Supernova Rewind
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Text, News From The Universe. January 29, 2021. The Earth spins.
Text, Supernova Rewind. January 29, 2021. Credit, NASA slash ESA, STScI, J. Banovetz, D. Milisavljevic.
Astronomers are studying the remains of a supernova to estimate the original star's time of death.
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Researchers analyzed archival, visible-light images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope 10 years apart.
Calculations show 22 clumps of oxygen gas speeding at an average 2 million miles per hour.
Photos, examples of Hubble Telescope data.
Text, Gas moving toward Earth is colored blue in this composition, and gas moving away is red, determined by Hubble's filters.
Composite images show streams of red and blue.
Text, Calculations indicate that light from the supernova arrived at Earth 1,700 years ago, during the decline of the Roman Empire.
Unlike some other supernovas observed in the distant past, no records of this one exist.
This news was brought to you in part by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD