Though a doomed star exploded some 20,000 years ago, its tattered remnants continue racing into space at breakneck speeds—and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has caught the action.
The nebula, called the Cygnus Loop, forms a bubble-like shape that is about 120 light-years in diameter. The distance to its center is approximately 2,600 light-years. The entire nebula has a width of six full moons as seen on the sky.
By analyzing the shock's location, astronomers found that the shock hasn't slowed down at all in the last 20 years, and is speeding intoat over half a million miles per hour—fast enough to travel from Earth to the moon in less than half an hour. While this seems incredibly fast, it's actually on the slow end for the speed of a supernova shock wave.
"When we pointed Hubble at the Cygnus Loop we knew that this was the leading edge of a shock front, which we wanted to study. When we got the initial picture and saw this incredible, delicate ribbon of light, well, that was a bonus. We didn't know it was going to resolve that kind of structure," said Blair.
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