Stellar Red Explosion Cloud of Supernova Imaged by Hubble

This picture-perfect blood-red explosion shell is what remained after a powerful supernova 600 years earlier, and is now imaged in all its beauty by space telescope Hubble. There are several types of supernovae. The source of this gas cloud, known as SNR 0519, is known to have been a white dwarf star — a Sun-like star in the final stages of its life.

SNR 0519 is located over 150 000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Dorado (The Dolphinfish), a constellation that also contains most of our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Because of this, this region of the sky is full of intriguing and beautiful deep sky objects.

The LMC orbits the Milky Way galaxy as a satellite and is the fourth largest in our group of galaxies, the Local Group. SNR 0519 is not alone in the LMC; the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope also came across a similar bubble a few years ago in SNR B0509-67.5, a supernova of the same type as SNR 0519 with a strikingly similar appearance.