January 17, 2013
Somewhere between the hydrogen and the starlight, between the gravity and the grace, the universe conspired to bring you into being.
Cas A: Optical and X-ray
Birthday · January 17, 2013
A little universe, just for you
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Ready to give.
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APOD published January 17, 2013. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
The aftermath of a cosmic cataclysm, supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is a comfortable 11,000 light-years away. Light from the Cas A supernova, the death explosion of a massive star, first reached Earth just 330 years ago. Still expanding, the explosion's debris cloud spans about 15 light-years near the center of this composite image. The scene combines color data of the starry field and fainter filaments of material at optical energies with image data from the orbiting NuSTAR X-ray telescope. Mapped to false colors, the X-ray data in blue hues trace the fragmented outer boundary of the expanding shock wave, glowing at energies up to 10,000 times the energy of the optical photons.