NASA has released a stunning galactic “photobomb” that shows an asteroid streaking past the Crab Nebula. The incredible snap was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and includes an impressive amount of detail. The Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant in the constellation of Taurus. It was first observed by William Parsons, 3rd Earl of […]
NASA has released a stunning galactic “photobomb” that shows an asteroid streaking past the Crab Nebula.
The incredible snap was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and includes an impressive amount of detail.
The Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant in the constellation of Taurus.
It was first observed by William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, in 1840 using a 36-inch telescope.
He produced a drawing of it that looked a bit like a crab – hence the name Crab Nebula.
The nebula is the first astronomical object ever to be identified with a historical supernova explosion.
It has an apparent magnitude of 8.4, which is comparable to Saturn’s moon Titan.
That means it isn’t visible to the naked eye, but can be seen using binoculars “under favourable conditions”.
The nebula itself is within the Perseus Arm of our home galaxy, the Milky Way.
But it’s at a distance of roughly 6,500 light years from Earth, so it’s hardly a close neighbour.
The asteroid is named 2001 SE101, and has been known to humanity since 2001.
It’s a “main belt” asteroid, which means it orbits the Sun in the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter.
It appears streaked because Hubble has to fixate on a patch of sky for a long period of time.
Just like long-exposure photography, this creates a trail effect for moving objects.
The initial image was uploaded in black and white, but volunteer astronomer Melina Thévenot processed the data to recreate the snap in colour.
Here's what you need to know...
The Crab Nebula itself is a supernova remnant – the remains of a supernova, a powerful and bright stellar explosion.
This occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star, or when a white dwarf goes into runaway nuclear fusion.
The original object collapses into either a neutron star or black hole, or is completely destroyed.
The “peak luminosity” of a supernova is comparable to an entire galaxy, before fading over several weeks or months.
Just three naked-eye supernova events have been observed in the Milky Way during the last thousand years.
The most recent of which was Kepler’s Supernova in 1604.
A supernova remnant is the structure resulting from the explosion of a star in a supernova.
It is bounded by an expanding shock wave.
And it’s made from ejected material expanding from the explosion, and interstellar material it sweeps up along the way.
In other news, Nasa recently revealed a stellar snap of a fiery “blue” meteor taken through an airplane window.
An asteroid obliterated early human civilisations in a catastrophic collision with Earth 13,000 years ago, scientists claim.
And, scientists have put together a minute by minute timeline of what happened when the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs struck Earth.
Do you think you’ll ever get the chance to fly to space? Let us know in the comments!
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