Fireworks from a century-old Nova

Nova GK Persei is a white dwarf star that threw an epic fit. It steals material from its companion star, and this material piles up on its surface, heated and hugely compressed. All at once it underwent catastrophic nuclear fusion, detonating like a bomb, blasting countless trillions of tons of matter outward at 1000 km/sec. The light reached Earth in 1901, and over the ensuing century we have watched the debris expand like fireworks.

The explosion blasts the material off the surface and away, into space. It took 1300 years for the light from the dwarf nova, as it’s called, to reach the Earth, arriving in 1901. For a brief time, Nova GK Persei was among the brightest objects in the sky. It has faded in the subsequent decades, but the material from the blast still rushes away from the star. Observations of this object have been made for a long time, and now astronomers have made an incredible animation of it using actual data...

Source

Oh way cool, I hadn't seen that one before. Any chance to see the effects of a super nova can't be passed up! The speeds and the scale are so mind boggling.

Here's a similar kind of video that I really like Crab Nebula Ripples

Amazing what we can see with current technology.
I've never witnessed motion like that before.
The scale of that explosion is enormous.
Too big to imagine.

I especially appreciate the focus on the last few years.
It really shows the movement of the particular matter.


Excellent find!

Originally posted by framedragged

Here's a similar kind of video that I really like Crab Nebula Ripples

Here, I posted the video for you.



S&F for the OP though, this is really amazing.