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    Galaxy M82

    Galaxy M82

    WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES

    07.01.2010

    Courtesy Photo

    NASA

    Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers pinpointed a blaze of light from the farthest supernova ever seen, a dying star that exploded 10 billion years ago. The detection and analysis of this supernova, called 1997ff, is greatly bolstering the case for the existence of a mysterious form of dark energy pervading the cosmos, making galaxies hurl ever faster away from each other. The supernova also offers the first glimpse of the universe slowing down soon after the Big Bang, before it began speeding up. This panel of images, taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, shows the supernova's cosmic neighborhood; its home galaxy; and the dying star itself. Astronomers found this supernova in 1997 during a second look at the northern Hubble Deep Field [top panel], a tiny region of sky first explored by the Hubble telescope in 1995. The image shows the myriad of galaxies Hubble spied when it peered across more than 10 billion years of time and space. The white box marks the area where the supernova dwells. The photo at bottom left is a close-up view of that region. The white arrow points to the exploding star's home galaxy, a faint elliptical. Its redness is due to the billions of old stars residing there. The picture at bottom right shows the supernova itself, distinguished by the white dot in the center. Although this stellar explosion is among the brightest beacons in the universe, it could not be seen directly in the Hubble images. The stellar blast is so distant from Earth that its light is buried in the glow of its host galaxy. To find the supernova, astronomers compared two pictures of the ''deep field'' taken two years apart. One image was of the original Hubble Deep Field; the other, the follow-up deep-field picture taken in 1997. Using special computer software, astronomers then measured the light from the galaxies in both images. Noting any changes in light output between the two pictures, the computer identified a blob of light in the 1997 picture that wasn't in the original deep-field study. That blob turned out to be the supernova. The red background texture is an artifact of the process of isolating the supernova. Original photo number is STScI-PRC01-09.

    NASA Identifier: JSC2001-00907

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    IMAGE INFO

    Date Taken: 07.01.2010
    Date Posted: 02.08.2013 09:07
    Photo ID: 842483
    Resolution: 6576x8220
    Size: 60.92 MB
    Location: WASHINGTON, D.C., US

    Web Views: 124
    Downloads: 4

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