Supernova remnant DEM L316A lies in the Large Magellanic Cloud some 160,000 light-years away in the far southern constellation of Dorado. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Y. Chu.This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures the remnants of a long-dead star. These rippling wisps of ionised gas, named DEM L316A, are located some 160,000 light-years away within one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbours — the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).
The explosion that formed DEM L316A was an example of an especially energetic and bright variety of supernova, known as a Type Ia. Such supernova events are thought to occur when a white dwarf star steals more material than it can handle from a nearby companion, and becomes unbalanced. The result is a spectacular release of energy in the form of a bright, violent explosion, which ejects the star’s outer layers into the surrounding space at immense speeds. As this expelled gas travels through the interstellar material, it heats it up and ionises it, producing the faint glow that Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 captured above.An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud captured with a DSLR and 85mm f/1.4 lens from New Zealand on 10 December 2015. Image credit: Ade Ashford.The LMC orbits the Milky Way as a satellite galaxy and is the fourth largest in our group of galaxies, the Local Group. DEM L316A is not alone in the LMC; Hubble came across another one in 2010 with SNR 0509, and in 2013 it snapped SNR 0519.
Astronomers have uncovered a unique process for how the universe’s largest elliptical galaxies continue making stars long after their peak years of star birth. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope revealed brilliant knots and chains of hot, blue stars forming along the jets of active black holes found in the centres of giant elliptical galaxies.
Here we see the spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 — more commonly known as WR 124 — and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it. Both objects, captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope are found in the constellation of Sagittarius and lie 15,000 light-years away.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals the glittering interior of one of the most active galaxies in our local neighbourhood — NGC 1569, a small starburst galaxy located about eleven million light-years away in the northern constellation of Camelopardalis. For almost 100 million years, NGC 1569 has pumped out stars over 100 times faster than the Milky Way.
