Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our

fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a
professional astronomer.

2005 April 21 

G21.5-0.9: A Supernova's Cosmic Shell 

Credit: Heather Matheson & Samar Safi-Harb (Univ. Manitoba), CXC, NASA

Explanation: The picture is lovely, but thispretty cosmic shell was produced by almost

unbelievable violence - created when a star with nearly 20 times the mass of the sun
blasted away its outer layers in a spectacular supernova explosion. As the expanding
debris cloud swept through surrounding interstellar material, shock waves heated the
gas causing the supernova remnant to glow in x-rays. In fact, it is possible that all
supernova explosions createsimilar shells, some brighter than others. Cataloged as
G21.5-0.9, this shell supernova remnant is relatively faint, requiring about 150 hours of
x-ray data from the orbiting Chandra Observatory to create this false-color image.
G21.5-0.9 is about 20,000 light-years distant in the constellation Scutum and measures
about 30 light-years across. Based on the remnant's size, astronomers estimate that light
from the original stellar explosion first reached Earth several thousand years ago.

Tomorrow's picture: pixels in spacetime

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