Though we all have differences, there’s one commonality that has prevailed for all of humanity: we are all floating on a rock, flying through outer space at over a million miles an hour.
Thanks to the rapid advancement of technology in the past century, we can observe much more of the universe than we ever thought possible.
The scale and sheer size of the universe make it impossible to truly learn everything, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Here's what's happening in space this week.
It hasn't even been a year since NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has been in operation, and it has already given the world a multitude of groundbreaking glimpses into unseen parts of the Universe.
It's revealed hidden galactic structures, a glimpse of a near-death star, and even the deepest image of the Universe ever taken. JWST's latest capture proves that discoveries from the telescope show no signs of slowing down.
In March, JWST revealed the rare sight of a massive Wolf-Rayet star just before it goes supernova. The image shows the dramatic sight of one the most luminous stars known to exist in stunning detail.
Webb's latest target displays the opposite: the remnants of a star that has already gone supernova. The new mid-infrared image from JWST shows, Cassiopeia A (Cas A), a supernova remnant located about 11,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia, according to NASA.
The remnant itself takes up 10 light-years of space.
Cas A is the result of a stellar explosion that happened 340 years ago from Earth's perspective. It is the youngest known supernova remnant in our galaxy.
The remnant offers astronomers further insights into how stellar explosions occur, as well as the origin of cosmic dust.
“Cas A represents our best opportunity to look at the debris field of an exploded star and run a kind of stellar autopsy to understand what type of star was there beforehand and how that star exploded,” said Danny Milisavljevic, assistant professor at Purdue University and principal investigator of the Webb program that captured the new data.
The colorful new image from JWST was translated from infrared light into visible wavelengths of light in order to study the various elements that Cas A is comprised of.
The red and orange exterior of the bubble represents warm dust, and indicates where material from the supernova is colliding into surrounding 'circumstellar gas and dust.'
The pink filaments and clumps that fill the interior represent material from the star itself; material that's comprised of a combination of various heavy elements, like oxygen, argon, and neon, according to NASA.
One of the most notable highlights of the image is a green loop that spans across the right side of the bubble's interior.
“We’ve nicknamed it the Green Monster in honor of Fenway Park in Boston. If you look closely, you’ll notice that it’s pockmarked with what look like mini-bubbles,” said Milisavljevic. “The shape and complexity are unexpected and challenging to understand.”
Ilse De Looze, a co-investigator on the program, added that astronomers have yet to fully understand the striking new data.
“We’re still trying to disentangle all these sources of emission,” he said.
While the image is certainly stunning to look at, the data provided within the image is even more remarkable for astronomers.
Studying data from supernovae could eventually help scientists uncover the mystery of cosmic dust, and even offer us insights into the early Universe. They may even get us closer to one of humanities' most enduring questions: Where did we come from?
“By understanding the process of exploding stars, we’re reading our own origin story,” said Milisavljevic. “I’m going to spend the rest of my career trying to understand what’s in this data set.”
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