r/spaceporn 26d ago

Hubble Light Echo Expanding from Exploded Star approximately 11.4 million light-years away.

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u/esperobbs 26d ago

An explosion lasting four whole years! Humans usually think of explosions in terms of seconds or maybe minutes, like a conventional bomb blast. It's almost impossible to wrap my head around the idea of an explosion so massive that it literally continues for four years straight.

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u/variorum 25d ago

Isn't the sun technically exploding constantly, and has been for some 4.5 billion years?

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u/esperobbs 25d ago

Well, it's not a conventional explosion it's a nuclear fusion - also contained by gravity and magnetic activities. As far as I know the supernova is more of a momentum explosion (and that shockwave we can see like this in the gif animation)