Spectacular image of ‘decorative’ supernova captured by Webb Telescope

Shown at the first time White House Advent Calendar for the 2023 holidaysa new image captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals never-before-seen details of the remnants of a massive star that collapsed as the most famous supernova in the Milky Way Galaxy.

“It’s like a bright, round ornament ready to be placed in the perfect spot on a holiday tree,” NASA said in images of Cassiopeia A captured by Webb’s near-infrared cameras. There are complex details of the expansion of the shells falling into the gas. the star before it exploded.

Cassiopeia A is in the constellation Cassiopeia about 11,000 light years from Earth. Understanding what happened to the supernova, the most famous remnant in our galaxy, first arrived on Earth 340 years ago and is one of the most studied objects in the universe.

The US space agency has reported many, many long-term images of the remnants of the supernova collected over the years by ground and space agencies, including NASA. Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope and retired Spitzer Space Telescope.

But, the Webb Telescope’s razor-sharp infrared equipment can detect tiny knots of gas, including sulfur, oxygen, argon and neon from the star itself. Although the infrared spectrum is invisible to our eyes, artists and scientists convert these long waves of light into visible colors.

“With the resolution of NIRCam, we can now see how the dead star was broken up when it exploded, leaving filaments like shards of glass behind,” said Danny Milisavljevic. of Purdue University, who led the researchers. NASA blog post. “It’s unbelievable that after all these years studying Cas A to solve these data, which gives us a changing understanding of how this star exploded.”

According to NASA scientists, the most noticeable colors in Webb’s new image are the clusters represented by the bright orange and light pink colors that make up the inner shell of the Sun. supernova remnant. Embedded in this gas is a mixture of dust and molecules, which will eventually become part of new stars and planetary systems. Some filaments of debris are too small to be resolved by the Webb, according to NASA, meaning they are comparable or less than 10 billion miles in diameter.

“We’ve never seen a star explode before,” astronomer Dan Milisavljevic, associate professor of physics and astronomy at Purdue University, said in a statement shared with CNN. “Supernovae are the main drivers of the evolution of the universe. The energy, their chemical properties – a lot depends on our understanding of supernovae. This is the closest we’ve seen to a supernova in our galaxy.”

But the Hubble Space Telescope, launched under the earth in 1990, “see” objects in the optical and ultraviolet spectrum, with some limited infrared capabilities, the Webb telescope is the best for looking at the universe through the spectrum infrared. The Webb telescope also has a larger mirror than Hubble, which collects more light and can see farther back in time than Hubble can.

The $10 billion Webb telescope is an international collaboration involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. It was launched into space on Christmas Day 2021 on a European Ariane 5 rocket and traveled to a position 1 million miles from home, where the sun orbits.

As the first Webb images are returned to Earth in July 2022, which are receiving data from ground-based antennas in Australia, California and Spain, the Hubble continues to operate and make observations from its position about 340 miles above Earth. Hubble was launched with an expected life of about 15 years, but NASA scientists say it can continue to work until the end of the 2020s.