Listen To Pink Floyd And Watch The Lovely Aftermath Of Stellar Destruction

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:00:00 PDT

It takes a lot of imaging power to capture the awesome aftermath of a star committing suicide. To get this freaktastic death blossom pic of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, it took three of NASA's Great Observatories, using three different light wavebands. The red is from the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared data, the yellow is visible data from the Hubble Space Telescope, and the green and blue are X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Cassiopeia went nova 11,300 years ago, but the nova itself would have been visible from Earth just 300 years ago. Image by AP/HO/NASA

The Biggest Space Explosions Ever Recorded

charliejane — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:30:23 PST

You can still see the shock wave from the explosion of supernova Cassiopeia A in this color-enhanced image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The blue glow around the dead star is the "forward shock," material blasted with energy by the shock wave when the star blew. Click through for a gallery of the biggest space detonations ever, including a deep-space eruption that released thousands of suns' worth of energy in a few seconds.

All images by AP.

io9: cassiopeia a

Listen To Pink Floyd And Watch The Lovely Aftermath Of Stellar Destruction

The Biggest Space Explosions Ever Recorded