stardeath

SN 1006: The Hot Remains of a 1000 Year-Old Supernova (A supernova remnant about 7,000 light years from Earth.)

from Smithsonian Institution

• 1 older comment, and then…
• Nondescript Stem said:

  Macro universe resembles micro universe! This is awesome

• Puzzling Actor said:

  If it's 7000 light years away wouldn't it be 7000 years old?

• lewis mackenzie said:

  Actually, if it's 7000 light years away and was first observed 100 years ago wouldn't that make it 8000 years old?

• Smithsonian Institution said:

  The concept is similar to receiving pictures of a baby through the mail. We look at a picture taken at the hospital the first day and declare the baby in the picture as "newborn" regardless of how long it took the post office to deliver the picture. Assuming a fixed time for delivering the mail, a picture received a year later will show me a one-year-old (though, in fact, by the time we get the picture the child may be a week older than that). If we watch the child grow up entirely through pictures received in the mail, it doesn't really matter how long the mail delay is (as long as it is always the same); we can simply track the age by the day on which we receive the mail.

• duiceburger said:

  Hi, I'm an admin for a group called NASA - Public Domain, and we'd love to have this added to the group!