Pic of the Week: The Glow of Cassiopeia A

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. (NASA/CXC/SAO (x-ray); NASA/ESA/STScI (optical); NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/D. Milisavljevic et al., NASA/JPL/Caltech (infrared); NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt and K. Arcand (image processing))

This week’s image was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and highlighted in Scientific American magazine. It shows a colorful supernova remnant called Cassiopeia A, which is about 350 light-years away.

The magazine article notes:

The recent photographs are helping scientists answer some of their most pressing questions about supernovae, such as which types of stars explode in which ways and how exactly those outbursts unfold. “There is a lot of complicated but beautiful physics in understanding how this explosion takes place,” says Purdue University astronomer Danny Milisavljevic, who led the team behind the JWST images…

Astronomers will keep studying Cassiopeia A, although their success makes them eager to turn JWST’s eyes toward some of the other roughly 400 identified supernova remnants in our galaxy. Getting a larger sample will help researchers connect differences in how remnants look and evolve to differences among the stars that produced them.