You Can Finally Watch the Blast of a Cosmic Supernova with Your Own Eyes

TheMightyChickadee writes:

You Can Finally Watch The Blast of a Cosmic Supernova With Your Own Eyes:

A ghostly "hand" reaching through the cosmos has just given us new insight into the violent deaths of massive stars.

The spectacular structure is the ejecta from a core-collapse supernova, and, by taking images of it over a 14-year span, astronomers have been able to observe as it blasts into space at around 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) per second.

At the very tips of the "fingers", the supernova remnant and blast wave - named MSH 15-52 - is punching into a cloud of gas called RCW 89, generating shocks and knots in the material, and causing the expanding supernova to decelerate.

MSH 15-52 is located 17,000 light-years away from Earth, and it seems to be one of the youngest known supernova remnants in the Milky Way. Light from the stellar explosion reached Earth approximately 1,700 years ago, as the progenitor star ran out of fuel to support fusion, exploding its outer material into space, and collapsing its core.

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