Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2021

38 MAY-JUNE 2021 ASTRO PUBLISHING Hubble pinpoints supernova blast T he NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has observed the su- pernova remnant named 1E 0102.2-7219. Researchers are using Hubble’s imagery of the remnant ob- ject to wind back the clock on the ex- panding remains of this exploded star in the hope of understanding the supernova event that caused it 1700 years ago. The featured star that ex- ploded long ago belongs to the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way located roughly 200,000 light-years away. The doomed star left behind an expand- ing, gaseous corpse — a supernova remnant — known as 1E 0102.2-7219. by NASA/ESA Bethany Downer L eft: pictured here is the region of sky around the supernova rem- nant 1E 0102.2-7219. [ESA/Hubble, Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowl- edgement: Davide De Martin] Top: Hubble’s Distant View of the Supernova Remnant 1E 0102.2-7219 in 2006. [NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)] Because the gaseous knots in this su- pernova remnant are moving at dif- ferent speeds and directions from the supernova explosion, those mov- ing toward Earth are colored blue in this composition and the ones mov- ing away are shown in red. This new Hubble image shows these ribbons of gas speeding away from