File:Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A.jpg

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English: This beautiful bulb might look like a Christmas ornament but it is the blown-out remains of a stellar explosion, or supernova. The remains, called Cassiopeia A, are shown here in an infrared composite from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Silicon gas is blue and argon gas is green, while red represents about 10,000 Earth masses worth of dust. Yellow shows areas where red and green overlap.

The fact that the red and green do overlap indicates that this supernova is synthesizing dust and gas together. This is the smoking gun indicating that supernovae were significant suppliers of fresh dust in the very early universe -- something that was hard to demonstrate prior to the Spitzer observations.

The data for these images were taken by Spitzer's infrared spectrograph, which splits light apart to reveal the fingerprints of molecules and elements. In total, Spitzer collected separate "spectra" at more than 1,700 positions across Cassiopeia A. Astronomers then created maps from this massive grid of data, showing the remnant in a multitude of infrared colors.
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Source http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/images/1723-ssc2007-20b-Cosmic-Ornament-of-Gas-and-Dust-Supernova-Remnant-Cas-A http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10206
Author NASA/JPL-Caltech/J. Rho (Caltech-SSC)
This image or video was catalogued by Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under Photo ID: PIA10206.

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Public domain This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)
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Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current06:08, 5 July 2012Thumbnail for version as of 06:08, 5 July 2012960 × 960 (287 KB)Metrónomo (talk | contribs)Better quality
19:01, 14 June 2011Thumbnail for version as of 19:01, 14 June 2011960 × 960 (67 KB)Spitzersteph (talk | contribs)

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