Photo Courtesy: Chandra X-Ray Observatory
The youngest known supernova in the Milky Way Galaxy which is only 140 year old and has expanded clearly since 1985, is called G1.9+0.3. The expansion is occurring at an amazing speed of 5% of speed of light (about 35 million miles per hour!). The supernova is located in the constellation Sagittarius (RA: 17h 48m 45s; Dec: −27d 10m) and is about 25,000 light years away from us (i.e. the explosion occurred nearly 25,000 years in the past).
The expansion was confirmed by the space-based NASA Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Due to its close location to the centre of the Galaxy, it is hard to see it visually due to dust though it can be "observed" by the emitted X-rays and radio waves.
2 comments:
There was a lot of buzz about NASA's "secret discovery" earlier this week that ended up with this supernova news yesterday.
BTW, thanks for the WikiSky link. I just discovered it. Looks really cool! Strange, there're so much talks about WWT and Google, but that site, that seems to me more advanced than both Google and Microsoft's Skies together, quietly exists.
You are absolutely right, Pete. You might have noticed that Wikisky and Skymap are identical sites.
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