SNR 1E 0102 Expansion

Hubble Time-Lapse Video Reveals Supernova Remnant Expansion

This time-lapse video shows the movement of a supernova remnant—the gaseous remains of an exploded star—that erupted approximately 1,700 years ago.

The stellar corpse, a supernova remnant named 1E 0102.2-7219, met its demise in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.

The movie's opening frame shows ribbons of glowing gaseous clumps that make up the remnant. Because the gaseous knots are moving at different speeds and directions from the supernova explosion, in this composition those moving toward us are colored blue and the ones moving away are colored red.

The video then toggles between two black-and-white images of the remnant, taken 10 years apart, revealing subtle shifts in the ejecta's expansion over time. To show that expansion in more detail, the movie ends with two close-ups of the knots' movement.

Researchers plumbed the Hubble archive for visible-light images of the supernova remnant. They analyzed the data to calculate a more accurate estimate of the age and center of the supernova blast.

The Small Magellanic Cloud, located roughly 200,000 light-years away, is visible in the southern hemisphere.

This color image is a blend of exposures taken in 2014 by the Wide Field Camera 3. The black-and-white images were taken in 2003 and 2013 by the Advanced Camera for Surveys.