Celestial Xmas bauble
Celestial Christmas bauble? This delicate shell, photographed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, seems to float serenely in space, but the apparent calm hides inner turmoil. Called SNR B0509-67.5 (or SNR 0509 for short), the bubble of gas is the remnant of a colossal explosion of a star, or supernova, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy about 160,000 light-years away. Ripples in the shell's surface may be caused either by subtle variations in the density of the gaseous environment, or possibly be driven from the interior by fragments from the initial explosion, astronomers say. The reddish shroud of gas is 23 light-years across and is expanding at more than 18 million km (11 million miles) per hour.
Source: World Science
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