Astrophoto Lab
---
your online source for astronomical & satellite images ---
A
Bright Supernova in the Nearby Galaxy
NGC 2403 |
||||||
NGC 2403, SN 2004dj, Caldwell 7 Spiral Galaxy, Supernova RA 7h 36m 58.45s Dec 65° 36' 8.43" Camelopardalis 12 million light years 8.9 21.9 × 12.3 arcmin 3.23 x 3.30 arcminutes North is 140.0° right of vertical NASA, ESA, A.V. Filippenko (U of California, Berkeley), P. Challis (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), et al. September 2, 2004 |
||||||
Click
the image to buy a print
|
+ | |||||
| ||||||
ABOUT THIS IMAGE: The explosion of a massive star (in the top right corner) blazes with the light of 200 million Suns in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image. The supernova is so bright in this image that it easily could be mistaken for a foreground star in our Milky Way Galaxy. And yet, this supernova, called SN 2004dj, resides far beyond our galaxy. Its home is in the outskirts of NGC 2403, a galaxy located 11 million light-years from Earth. Although the supernova is far from Earth, it is the closest stellar explosion discovered in more than a decade. (ID: opo0423a) Also pictured here is NGC 2404, the small bright region at the right of center. From Wikipedia: NGC
2403 (also known as Caldwell 7) is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the
constellation Camelopardalis. NGC 2403 is an outlying member of the M81
Group, and is approximately 8 million light-years distant. It bears a
striking similarity to M33, being about 50,000 light years in diameter
and containing numerous star-forming H II regions. The northern spiral
arm connects it to the star forming region NGC 2404. NGC 2403 can be observed
using 10×50 binoculars. |
||||||