This release features a ten second silent video of Kepler’s expanding Supernova Remnant, located in our own galaxy, about 17,000 light-years from Earth. The video was created using X-ray data gathered in 2000, 2004, 2006, 2014, and 2025. Those distinct datasets were turned into highly-detailed visuals, creating a 25-year timelapse-style video of the growing remnant.
Kepler’s Supernova Remnant was once a white dwarf star that exploded when it exceeded its critical mass. Here, in X-ray light, the remnant resembles a cloudy neon blue ring with a diagonal cross line stretching from our upper right down to our lower left. The ring appears thinner and wispier at the bottom, with a band of white arching across the top.
As the video plays, cycling through the 5 datasets, the ring subtly, but clearly, expands, like a slowly inflating balloon. In the video, this sequence is replayed several times with dates included at our lower right, to give sighted learners time to absorb the visual information. Upon close inspection, researchers have determined that the bottom of the remnant is expanding fastest; about 13.8 million miles per hour, or 2% of the speed of light. The top of the ring appears to be expanding the slowest; about 4 million miles per hour, or 0.5% of the speed of light. The large difference in speed is because the gas that the remnant is plowing into towards the top of the image is denser than the gas towards the bottom.
We discuss this as an article in my Weekly News Round Up, see below.
In my Weekly News Roundup, I discuss articles from Scientists at the New Jersey Institute of Technology have identified a previously hidden source of intense gamma-ray radiation produced during massive solar flares — something researchers have been trying to pinpoint for years.
Next we go deep into the aftermath of a cosmic explosion, — not just with words, but with over 25 years of star-blast footage that’s finally letting astronomers see time itself unfold across the Supernova remains of Kepler's Supernova of 1604!
After that we take a deep dive into one of the weirdest cosmic finds NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has pulled out of the early universe, a cosmic platypus, yes, a PLATYPUS out in space! Not a real platypus but a set of galaxies so strange that astronomers affectionately call them “astronomy’s platypus
Then we peek into the hidden history of our own galaxy’s central black hole — Sagittarius A*. We know it hasn't always been quiet in the cosmic past and it has had explosive outbursts. However, new observations suggest that this usually sleepy monster wasn’t always so quiet and may have blasted out X-rays like a cosmic flare gun just a few hundred to a thousand years ago.
Last, are you like me and are fascinated by supernova? Our last story uncovers a fascinating twist in how stars live and die — not in the crowded heart of star-forming clouds like we often imagine, but off the beaten path.
Imagine a galaxy not unlike our own — a swirling spiral of stars, gas, and dust. Now imagine that the giant, massive stars in that galaxy end their lives not where they were born, but out in the less-dense, quieter outskirts of star-forming regions. That’s exactly what a new study of the nearby galaxy M33 has revealed and shares why that is so important to expanding our own knowledge on the formation and evolution of galaxies.
As always, you can read the scripts over at EadsyAstronomy, see the movie on Kepler's Supernova and I've supplied links to the articles I discuss here.
