Thursday, April 16, 2009

Hand of God found in space.

Looks more like the hand of Skeletor, but whatevs. From News.com.au:
The amazing image was taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory, which is orbiting 580km above the Earth.

[...] The hand was created when a star exploded in a supernova, creating a rapidly spinning 20km-wide star called a pulsar, which is deep inside the white blob at the hand's wrist.

The pulsar is spewing out enormous amounts of electromagnetic energy, creating a dust and gas cloud so wide it would take 150 years to cross at the speed of light.

The red disc is a separate gas cloud. The fingers are thought to have been created as energy passed from the pulsar to the gas cloud.

NASA scientists estimated the moment depicted here actually happened 17,000 years ago.

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