Astronomy Picture Of The Day: Spot the supernova!

 

#Astronomy, #NASA , #Space, #διάστημα,

Black Hole 

Look closely at the upper right — that dazzling pinprick of light isn’t just another star. It’s a supernova, the cataclysmic death explosion of a massive star, blazing with the fury of 200 million Suns! At first glance, it could easily fool you into thinking it’s a nearby star in our own Milky Way. But this cosmic fireball is actually far beyond our galaxy, erupting on the outskirts of NGC 2403, a majestic spiral galaxy 11 million light-years away. Hubble snapped this stunning image in 2004, just two weeks after an amateur astronomer spotted the explosion — catching the supernova while it was still near peak brilliance. A fleeting moment of stellar violence captured forever from across the vastness of space. Image credit: NASA, ESA, A.V. Filippenko (University of California, Berkeley), P. Challis (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), et al.