The space often gives us surprises ... this was the case a few days ago (September 16th): European Herschel Space Telescope (in collaboration with NASA) has managed to capture in a single image, a picture of the death of a star and the birth of another.
What you can see in this picture at the top (see the picture in highest quality here) a huge cloud of gas with inside the W44-supernova remnant in purple (= the death of a star) and a new generation of stars in blue sky (whose the birth of a new one).
The W44-supernova remnant, which is in the constellation of the Eagle, is a "vast purple sphere" of 100 light-years in diameter located at about 10 000 light-years from our planet, and could be aged 20 000 years.
"In the constellation of the Eagle, the stars are in constant formation. Any material rejected by the supernova will thus serve to create a new star", explains the Huffington Post*.
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* French website in collaboration with Lemonde.fr
Source : Le Monde (french post)
Categories:
Space,
Stars,
Supernovas
Seeing the title, I thought for a moment that it was the birth and death of a single star, which would have been amazing, but imagine what happens with gravitational lens giving one second delayed picture (or forward) in time to the same star.