From
Bad Astronomy:
Astronomers using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory have just released an extraordinarily cool animation. Composed of images taken between 2000 and 2007, it shows the supernova remnant Cas A literally expanding as you watch it!
See the little white dot in the center? That used to be a star, a big one. About 330 years ago*, that star blew up in a titanic supernova explosion. Several octillion tons of material screamed outward from the star at a good fraction of the speed of light, leaving behind an ultradense neutron star, the remains of the star’s core. So, that dot in the center? It’s an object a dozen kilometers across that has about the same mass as our entire Sun. It has a density of about 100 million tons per cubic centimeter. That’s roughly the mass of every single car in the United States, crushed into a cube the size of, oh, say, a mini marshmallow.
5 Comments
13439says...Cool sift. It would be interesting to see this thing change over the next 20 or so years, or see a computer extrapolate it and smooth it out.
quantumushroomsays...We've secretly replaced this supernova's regular coffee with FOLGERS Crystals!
Let's watch!
siftbotsays...Moving this video to BicycleRepairMan's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.
BicycleRepairMansays...*beg
siftbotsays...Sending this video to Beggar's Canyon to plea for a little attention - beg requested by original submitter BicycleRepairMan.
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