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FOR RELEASE: July 3, 2003

PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC03-20

CELESTIAL FIREWORKS

Resembling the puffs of smoke and sparks from a summer fireworks
display in this image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, these
delicate filaments are actually sheets of debris from a stellar
explosion in a neighboring galaxy. Hubble's target was a supernova
remnant within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a nearby, small
companion galaxy to the Milky Way visible from the southern
hemisphere.

Denoted N 49, or DEM L 190, this remnant is from a massive star
that died in a supernova blast whose light would have reached
Earth thousands of years ago. This filamentary material will
eventually be recycled into building new generations of stars in
the LMC. Our own Sun and planets are constructed from similar
debris of supernovae that exploded in the Milky Way billions of
years ago.

The Hubble Heritage image of N 49 is a color representation of data
taken in July 2000, with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

Image Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: Y.-H. Chu (UIUC), S. Kulkarni (Caltech) and R. 
Rothschild (UCSD)

About the Object

Object Name:        LMC N 49, DEM L 190
Object Description: Supernova Remnant 
Position (J2000):   R.A. 05h 25m 57s.3
                    Dec. -66ø 05' 20"
Constellation:      Dorado
Distance:           The distance to the LMC is roughly 160,000
                    light-years (50 kpc).
Dimensions:         The image is roughly 1.9 arcminutes (91
                    light-years or 28 parsecs) across.

About the Data

Data Description:   This image is a composite of archived Hubble
                    observations from proposal 8114 by Y.-H. Chu
                    (UIUC), R. Williams (UMASS), J. Dickel (UIUC), A.
                    Caulet (ESO), R. Klinger (UIUC), E.Gotthelf
                    (Columbia Astrophysics Lab); proposal 6827 by S.
                    R. Kulkarni (Caltech), M. H. van Kerkwijk (U. of
                    Toronto), R. Danner (JPL), T. Murakami (Kanazawa
                    Univ. Japan); and proposal 6777 by R. Rothschild,
                    D. Marsden, R. Cohen (UCSD). Instrument: WFPC2 
Exposure Date(s):   November 14, 1998, April 27, 1999, July 14, 2000
Exposure Time:      3.1 hours
Filters:            F502N ([O III]), F656N (Ha), F673N ([S II]),
                    F814W (I), F547M (Stromgren y)

About the Image

Image Credit:       NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Release Date:       July 3, 2003

Questions & Answers - Understanding the discovery

When did the supernova blast occur? 

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) supernova remnant N 49 as seen in
this Hubble image is only a few thousand years old. However, the
Earth's distance to the LMC is 160,000 light-years, meaning that it
takes 160,000 years for the light from the LMC to reach Earth.
Although the remnant is from a massive star that died in a supernova
blast thousands of years ago, by our Earth calendars the blast
actually occurred over 160,000 years ago.

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