Stunning Nasa photo shows asteroid streaking past exploded supernova in ‘galactic photobomb’
NASA has released a stunning galactic “photobomb” that shows an asteroid streaking past the Crab Nebula. The incredible snap was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and includes an impressive amount of detail. The Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant in the constellation of Taurus. It was first observed by William Parsons, 3rd Earl of […]
NASA has released a stunning galactic “photobomb” that shows an asteroid streaking past the Crab Nebula.
The incredible snap was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and includes an impressive amount of detail.
The Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant in the constellation of Taurus.
It was first observed by William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, in 1840 using a 36-inch telescope.
He produced a drawing of it that looked a bit like a crab – hence the name Crab Nebula.
The nebula is the first astronomical object ever to be identified with a historical supernova explosion.
It has an apparent magnitude of 8.4, which is comparable to Saturn’s moon Titan.
That means it isn’t visible to the naked eye, but can be seen using binoculars “under favourable conditions”.
The nebula itself is within the Perseus Arm of our home galaxy, the Milky Way.
But it’s at a distance of roughly 6,500 light years from Earth, so it’s hardly a close neighbour.
The asteroid is named 2001 SE101, and has been known to humanity since 2001.
It’s a “main belt” asteroid, which means it orbits the Sun in the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter.
It appears streaked because Hubble has to fixate on a patch of sky for a long period of time.
Just like long-exposure photography, this creates a trail effect for moving objects.
The initial image was uploaded in black and white, but volunteer astronomer Melina Thévenot processed the data to recreate the snap in colour.
What is the Hubble Space Telescope?
Here's what you need to know...
- The Hubble Space Telescope is a telescope that captures images while in space
- It was launched into a low-Earth orbit in 1990 and is still fully operational
- The advantage of Hubble is that it takes photos from outside of Earth’s atmosphere
- This means distortion from the atmosphere is removed, allowing for more accurate image capture
- Nasa’s Hubble has captured some of most detailed images of space ever recorded
- The Hubble telescope was also able to accurately determine the rate at which the universe was expanding
- Hubble is also the only telescope that was designed to be serviced by astronauts in space
- Five different missions have been launched to repair, upgrade or replace parts of the Hubble telescope
- It’s believed that the Hubble telescope could continue working until 2040
- But its successor – the James Webb Space Telescope – is already set for launch in March 2021
The Crab Nebula itself is a supernova remnant – the remains of a supernova, a powerful and bright stellar explosion.
This occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star, or when a white dwarf goes into runaway nuclear fusion.
The original object collapses into either a neutron star or black hole, or is completely destroyed.
The “peak luminosity” of a supernova is comparable to an entire galaxy, before fading over several weeks or months.
Just three naked-eye supernova events have been observed in the Milky Way during the last thousand years.
The most recent of which was Kepler’s Supernova in 1604.
A supernova remnant is the structure resulting from the explosion of a star in a supernova.
It is bounded by an expanding shock wave.
And it’s made from ejected material expanding from the explosion, and interstellar material it sweeps up along the way.
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In other news, Nasa recently revealed a stellar snap of a fiery “blue” meteor taken through an airplane window.
An asteroid obliterated early human civilisations in a catastrophic collision with Earth 13,000 years ago, scientists claim.
And, scientists have put together a minute by minute timeline of what happened when the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs struck Earth.
Do you think you’ll ever get the chance to fly to space? Let us know in the comments!
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