Our universe is filled with infinite numbers of stars that continue to shine bright throughout their lives. After maintaining their radiant glow for millions and many times billions of years, these stars meet their final destination. Scientists call this phenomenon a supernova.
As the name suggests, a Supernova is not just a star’s death, but it is the most spectacular, awe-inspiring moment of its life, which begins when the celestial body exhausts all its nuclear fuel and starts collapsing under its own gravity. The contraction is followed by a single breathtaking moment where the dying star releases all the energy in a colossal explosion, which is a supernova.
Space agencies like NASA, ESA, etc frequently share the photos and sometimes videos of supernova witnessed in the Space. Here are six spectacular supernova images captured by NASA
This Supernovae led to the birth of Cassiopeia A (Cas A). Ideally, supernovae spread elements like calcium and iron in interstellar space, seeding new generations of stars and planets. This is the youngest known remnant from an exploding, massive star in our galaxy.
The image of this supernova remnant was formed after combining X rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory in blue and green, radio data from the NSF’s Very Large Array in pink, and infrared data from Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in yellow.
The image was formed with the inputs from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The image captures the transition of a supernova to a supernova remnant. Named Supernova 1987A, it was the closest supernova explosion witnessed in almost 400 years.
This NASA image has captured a rare sight of a supernova. Only a few massive stars go through a brief Wolf-Rayet phase before entering into their death phase with supernova. Enjoy this rare phase of WR 124 before it explodes into a colossal supernova.
The NASA image is of supernova remnant SN 1006, which is situated around 6,500 light-years from Earth in the Lupus constellation.
This photo of supernova SN 1993J helped scientists in validating a theory that the supernova occurred inside a binary system, where two interacting stars caused a cosmic explosion.