Cool picture sent back from Hubbel Telescope

CycloneTony

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080701194002.jpg


Hubble Sees Stars And A Stripe In Celestial Fireworks

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2008) — A delicate ribbon of gas floats eerily in our galaxy. A contrail from an alien spaceship? A jet from a black-hole? Actually this image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago.


On or around May 1, 1006 A.D., observers from Africa to Europe to the Far East witnessed and recorded the arrival of light from what is now called SN 1006, a tremendous supernova explosion caused by the final death throes of a white dwarf star nearly 7,000 light-years away. The supernova was probably the brightest star ever seen by humans, and surpassed Venus as the brightest object in the night time sky, only to be surpassed by the moon. It was visible even during the day for weeks, and remained visible to the naked eye for at least two and a half years before fading away.
It wasn't until the mid-1960s that radio astronomers first detected a nearly circular ring of material at the recorded position of the supernova. The ring was almost 30 arcminutes across, the same angular diameter as the full moon. The size of the remnant implied that the blast wave from the supernova had expanded at nearly 20 million miles per hour over the nearly 1,000 years since the explosion occurred.
In 1976, the first detection of exceedingly faint optical emission of the supernova remnant was reported, but only for a filament located on the northwest edge of the radio ring. A tiny portion of this filament is revealed in detail by the Hubble observation. The twisting ribbon of light seen by Hubble corresponds to locations where the expanding blast wave from the supernova is now sweeping into very tenuous surrounding gas.
The hydrogen gas heated by this fast shock wave emits radiation in visible light. Hence, the optical emission provides astronomers with a detailed "snapshot" of the actual position and geometry of the shock front at any given time. Bright edges within the ribbon correspond to places where the shock wave is seen exactly edge on to our line of sight.
Today we know that SN 1006 has a diameter of nearly 60 light-years, and it is still expanding at roughly 6 million miles per hour. Even at this tremendous speed, however, it takes observations typically separated by years to see significant outward motion of the shock wave against the grid of background stars. In the Hubble image as displayed, the supernova would have occurred far off the lower right corner of the image, and the motion would be toward the upper left.
SN 1006 resides within our Milky Way Galaxy. Located more than 14 degrees off the plane of the galaxy's disk, there is relatively little confusion with other foreground and background objects in the field when trying to study this object. In the Hubble image, many background galaxies (orange extended objects) far off in the distant universe can be seen dotting the image. Most of the white dots are foreground or background stars in our Milky Way galaxy.
 

CycloneTony

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Haha i would say a very good photoshop. It came from a pretty reputiable website so im pretty sure its degit. Yeah i thought it was neat as well
 

Phaedrus

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ScienceDaily (July 2, 2008) — A delicate ribbon of gas floats eerily in our galaxy. A contrail from an alien spaceship? A jet from a black-hole? Actually this image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago.

On or around May 1, 1006 A.D., observers from Africa to Europe to the Far East witnessed and recorded the arrival of light from what is now called SN 1006, a tremendous supernova explosion caused by the final death throes of a white dwarf star nearly 7,000 light-years away.

As a writer of things technical, I am mortified by the complete ignorance of logic exhibited by the writer in these first two paragraphs.

If man "saw" the supernova in 1006 AD, and the star is nearly 7000 light-years away, how did the supernova happen 1,000 years ago?

Can anyone in the CF listening audience tell me when the star actually went supernova? Anyone??? Bueller???

Idiot...
 

isumellie

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The size of the remnant implied that the blast wave from the supernova had expanded at nearly 20 million miles per hour over the nearly 1,000 years since the explosion occurred.

I took that as an indication that the explosion was traveling faster than the speed of light. That is the reason that it only took 1000 years to travel 7000 light years.
 

agcy68

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As a writer of things technical, I am mortified by the complete ignorance of logic exhibited by the writer in these first two paragraphs.

If man "saw" the supernova in 1006 AD, and the star is nearly 7000 light-years away, how did the supernova happen 1,000 years ago?

Can anyone in the CF listening audience tell me when the star actually went supernova? Anyone??? Bueller???

Idiot...

I understood this to mean that the star went supernova 7000 years before 1000 AD. So, before 1000 AD, the star was very bright in the sky. "At" 1000 AD, the star's supernova light reached the earth. Now, we can only see where the ribbon was 7000 years ago.
 

Phaedrus

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I took that as an indication that the explosion was traveling faster than the speed of light. That is the reason that it only took 1000 years to travel 7000 light years.

3.0 X 10 m^8. It's not just a good idea, It's The Law!!!

That's 670,616,629.4 miles per hour, give or take 0.07% error, for the rest of you good people.

Just a "smidge" faster than 20 million mph....
 

1100011CS

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---------------- Now playing: Rise Against - The First Drop via FoxyTunes
As a writer of things technical, I am mortified by the complete ignorance of logic exhibited by the writer in these first two paragraphs.

If man "saw" the supernova in 1006 AD, and the star is nearly 7000 light-years away, how did the supernova happen 1,000 years ago?

Can anyone in the CF listening audience tell me when the star actually went supernova? Anyone??? Bueller???

Idiot...

It doesn't say the star went supernova 1000 years ago. It says the light from the supernova *arrived* 1000 years ago. Which means the supernova happened 7000 years before that or about 8000 years ago. And no, the explosion didn't somehow speed up the speed of light. That would have all kinds of weird implications.
 

Phaedrus

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---------------- Now playing: Rise Against - The First Drop via FoxyTunes

It doesn't say the star went supernova 1000 years ago. It says the light from the supernova *arrived* 1000 years ago. Which means the supernova happened 7000 years before that or about 8000 years ago.

"Actually this image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago."

Literally, it says that the stellar explosion occurred more than 1,000 years ago.

It's either technically correct, but poor writing.... Or it's not technically correct....

The transition between paragraph one and two does not definitively explain which.

It's kind of like the old joke about the man with one leg, named George. The punchline, of course, is "What did he name is other leg?":wink:

Personally, I chalk it up to scientific ineptitude. Not that I haven't unintentionally written "kasha" before....:wideeyed:
 

1100011CS

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---------------- Now playing: Rise Against - Blood To Bleed via FoxyTunes
"Actually this image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago."

Literally, it says that the stellar explosion occurred more than 1,000 years ago.

It's either technically correct, but poor writing.... Or it's not technically correct....

The transition between paragraph one and two does not definitively explain which.

It's kind of like the old joke about the man with one leg, named George. The punchline, of course, is "What did he name is other leg?":wink:

Personally, I chalk it up to scientific ineptitude. Not that I haven't unintentionally written "kasha" before....:wideeyed:

Oh, I was just reading the second paragraph. Looks to me like this post was copied from a news service where the service added it's own take in the first paragraph and the second paragraph is the actual technical paper. So, the idiot is most likely the news service. Imagine that.
 

CycloneTony

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Yeah its from sciencedaily.com and taken from the HubbleSite News Center so my guess its just some writers interpretation
 

CyinCo

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Mar 24, 2006
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The question is : Does something OCCUR when you SEE it or does it occur when it happened? The explosion was witnessed 1000 years ago. To people on earth, that is when it happened as it is when it was witnessed to happen. But, I believe it actually took place over 8000 years ago.

I'm sure there is some sort of astrological standard that is used with timing so that there isn't confusion between scientists. I don't know.
 

jbhtexas

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Oct 20, 2006
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I'm sure there is some sort of astrological standard that is used with timing so that there isn't confusion between . I don't know.

Since we don't know the supernova's birthday, we can't really tell whether it is a Pisces, or a Libra, or an Aires, etc... :wink:
 

benjay

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Mar 23, 2006
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While the supernova occurred 8000 years ago, we were able to observe it only 1000 years ago. So to us, it "happened" 1000 years ago? I don't know, I'm with you... the writer screwed up. He confused "observed" with "happened".
 

pulse

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Mar 24, 2006
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They did say it happened more than 1000 years ago, and if the star exploded 8,000 years ago, they are technically correct. 8,000 years ago is covered under 'more than 1000 years ago'.
 

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