Another celestial image shared by NASA is going viral on social media and this one captures the end of a bright star.?
The US space agency has shared an image of a supernova located around 10,700 light years away from Earth, captured by its Chandra X-ray Observatory.
The dreamy mix of colours seen in the NASA image depicts supernova RCW 103 remnant as captured in 2016. In its Instagram post, NASA explains that the bright light seen at the centre of the supernova is a neutron star - the collapsed core of a super massive star. Astronomers believe that the neutron star within RCW 103 is nearly 2,000 years old.
Supernova in itself marks the last evolutionary stage of a massive star. When a star goes supernova, a massive (the biggest ever observed by humans) explosion takes place in space, sending shockwaves and elements throughout the specific region of the universe.
NASA shared another interesting piece of information in its post. As per the space agency, the matter in a neutron star is packed extremely tightly. It is so dense that a sugar-cube-sized neutron star material would weigh more than 1 billion tonnes -? ¡°roughly the weight of Mount Everest,¡± it says.
NASA has been actively bringing such cosmic treats to skygazers through its social media accounts. The space agency has shared images captured through its various space telescopes to explain several such astronomical events overtime.
Within the past few months, NASA has shared a video of two intertwined galaxies in the constellation Hydra, an Einstein ring that is being called as the ¡°Molten Ring" by astronomers as well as a ¡°fireworks galaxy¡± that has observed 10 supernovae within the last century alone.