Astronomy Picture of the Day: A Star's Spectacular Final Act!!!

#NASA, #Space, #astronomy, #διάστημα,

Black Hole@konstructivizm

This stunning digital illustration freezes the breathtaking first instants of a cosmic cataclysm—a supernova detonation. Created from cutting-edge observations of SN 2024ggi, it depicts the dramatic shock breakout: the moment the star's ferocious shockwave tears through its outer layers and erupts into space in a blaze of glory.The explosion unfolded in the elegant spiral galaxy NGC 3621, a relatively nearby cosmic neighbor just 22 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra. What died in this fiery spectacle was a massive red supergiant—a bloated behemoth roughly 12–15 times the Sun's mass and swollen to an incredible 500 times the Sun's radius—reaching the violent end of its life after millions of years of fusion-fueled fury.Thanks to rapid-response observations with ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT)—which captured the event a mere 26 hours after discovery—this supernova offered an unprecedented glimpse into the asymmetric, olive-like shape of the initial blast, rewriting our understanding of how these stellar titans meet their explosive demise. Image Credit: ESO's Very Large Telescope