esahubble_opo9729c September 18th, 1997
Credit: Mike Shara, Bob Williams, and David Zurek ( Space Telescope Science Institute); Roberto Gilmozzi (European Southern Observatory); Dina Prialnik (Tel Aviv University); and NASA/ESA
Closer inspection by the Hubble Space Telescope, however, reveals that the shells are not smooth at all. In fact, this high-resolution image shows that the shells are actually more than 2, 000 gaseous blobs packed into an area that is 1 light-year across. Resembling shrapnel from a shotgun blast, the blobs may have been produced by the nova explosion, the subsequent expansion of gaseous debris, or collisions between fast-moving and slow- moving gas from several eruptions. False colour has been applied to this image to enhance details in the blobs.
Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA
Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9729c/
Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany
Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
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