Horseshoes and Jellyfish

Credit: NASA, ESA, and Hub­ble SM4 ERO Team

Glow­ing pink and pur­ple gas resem­bling a horse­shoe or a jel­ly­fish are all that’s left of super­nova rem­nant N132D in the Large Mag­el­lanic Cloud. A star 10 to 15 times larger and more mas­sive than the Sun exploded about 3,000 years ago to cre­ate this expand­ing shell of gas and dust. NASA’s Hub­ble Space Telescope’s sharp vision shows astronomers details within the remnant.

Find the pink cres­cent glow­ing in the cen­ter of the image. As the edge of fast mov­ing gas plows into quiet inter­stel­lar space, it causes hydro­gen gas to glow. Pur­ple wisps show glow­ing oxy­gen. Thou­sands of col­or­ful stars make up the rich back­ground of the Large Mag­el­lanic Cloud.

Super­novae are the ulti­mate ends of stars in the galaxy. Stars like our Sun are not heavy enough to die in such a huge explo­sion. In four bil­lion years or so, our Sun will bal­loon into a red giant star. Even­tu­ally, the outer lay­ers of the Sun will blow off into space and a plan­e­tary neb­ula will form around a hot, white dwarf star; all that’s left of our golden Sun. But stars that are more 5– to 15– times larger than our Sun burn their hydro­gen fuel much faster. Even­tu­ally, the star can­not keep up the pace of burn­ing and col­lapses on itself. Dur­ing the col­lapse, as gas is com­pressed into a smaller space, it becomes super hot. Nuclear fusion begins in the stars outer lay­ers and explodes into a “super new star” that for a brief time out­shines its par­ent galaxy. Super­nova help spread heav­ier ele­ments, that can only be cre­ated in such an explo­sion, through­out the galaxy.

N132D resides in the Large Mag­el­lanic Cloud, a com­pan­ion galaxy to the Milky Way. The super­nova rem­nant is about 170,000 light years away.