Cosmic Puffball

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/K.Eriksen et al.; Opti­cal: DSS

A cos­mic puff­ball seems to float in this image of the Tycho Super­nova Rem­nant from NASA’s Chan­dra X-ray Observatory.

You won’t need 3-D glasses to explore this deep image. Cotton-like clouds of dust and gas can be seen in the expand­ing bub­ble from the blast. Look closer in the right side of the bub­ble and you can see what excites sci­en­tists most about this image; stripes in the X-ray image. The bright­est stripes can even be seen in vis­i­ble images. Astronomers have never seen fea­tures like this within the remains of an exploded star. They believe the stripes help explain how cos­mic rays are created.

Cos­mic rays are ener­getic par­ti­cles made up of elec­trons, neu­trons and atomic nuclei. Trav­el­ing at nearly the speed of light, they orig­i­nate from space. But their ulti­mate source is unknown. Astronomers believe that super­novae rem­nants are one source of cos­mic rays.

The stripes in the image pro­vide sup­port for the­o­ries about how mag­netic fields can be ampli­fied in the super­nova blast waves. Elec­trons trapped in tur­bu­lent areas of the expand­ing bub­ble sur­round­ing the super­nova emit X-rays as they spi­ral within the mag­netic fields. These regions of tur­bu­lence and mag­netic fields were expected. Sci­en­tists pre­dicted that most of the ener­getic par­ti­cles would leave a messy net­work of holes and walls. The orderly stripes sur­prised scientists.

The Tycho Super­nova Rem­nant is located inside our Milky Way Galaxy about 13,000 light-years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion Cas­siopeia, the Queen. Dan­ish astronomer Tycho Brahe first reported see­ing the super­nova in 1572. It was so bright that it could eas­ily be seen dur­ing the day­time with the naked eye.

Comments

robZtv 13-04-2011, 21:41

clown falls down manhole.

freddie l dilworth sr 16-04-2011, 17:57

I know that real places exisit in outer space in those mil­lion, bil­lion and tril­lon light years away.

I believe the Bible when it says that Paul was caught up in the spirit into the third heaven and heard unspeak­ably won­der­ous things beyond the power of man to put into words.

I also believe these enu­mer­able stars will be the dwelling places Jesus promised us in John’s Gospel. Jesus said, “in My Father’s house (the King­dom of Heaven)there are many man­sions. if it were not so I would have told you. I go to pre­pare a place for you. And if I go to pre­pare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to Myself, that where I Am you may be also”.

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