As we are studying stars, I found this image of the supernova remnant SNR 0509-67.5 to be particularly relevant and also visually astounding. The ring has a reddish tint because the Hubble Space Telescope used imaging that only captures the frequencies of energetic hydrogen, which occurs when hydrogen electrons fall from the third lowest energy level to the second lowest level using quantum mechanics. Energetic hydrogen also happens to be the brightest of visible stellar light, and is therefore the most useful to be extracted in a photograph of a star's remnant. The reason that the gas is in the shape of a bubble is that these particles have been shocked by the blast of the supernova that occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, which is about 160,000 light years away from Earth and are considered satellites of the Milky Way Galaxy and are oddly shaped, and is currently moving at the high speed of 11 million miles per hour! This explosion has been classified as a type Ia supernova, which results from the violent explosion of a white dwarf star that has completed its life cycle and stopped its process of nuclear fusion. This supernova remnant lies near the constellation Dorado, or the goldfish, and although it is extremely far away, the brightest star Canopus (apart of the Milky Way) is only 310 light years away.
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