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Credit & Copyright: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and
M. Michailidis
et al. 2026; optical: DSS;
infrared: NASA/WISE/JPL-Caltech/UCLA; ultraviolet: NASA/Swift
Text: Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)
Explanation:
What happens when one of the stars in a binary
goes supernova?
This image
combines visible (yellow), ultraviolet (purple) and infrared light (cyan, red and
orange) to show two supernova remnants and their surrounding
environment, about 6,000 light-years away.
The younger one is the well-known Jellyfish Nebula
in the center (mostly in yellow).
If we could see it by eye, it would appear larger
than the full moon in the sky.
The filament shown in purple is part of an older, overlapping supernova remnant,
G189.6+3.3.
A new
study used data from NASA's Fermi
Gamma-ray Space Telescope to piece together their story.
Astronomers believe that there were two stars in a binary system, then the first
one exploded as a supernova, kicking
away its companion, which also exploded as a supernova tens of thousands of years
later, creating the superimposed supernova remnants we see today.
The bright star on the right is actually a triple star system named Propus.
Text: Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II)
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