A huge ghost structure stretching after a shining cloud of dust was photographed in space by NASA’s X-ray telescope, the Chandra space telescope.
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The “hand” was created by the death of a massive star; after the supernova explosion, a rapidly rotating, extremely dense stellar remnant called a pulsar was formed – read In a NASA statement.
The pulsar created a bubble of charged particles around it, which, together with the debris from the starburst, formed a 150-year-old hand-like structure in space. The hand pictured reaches for a glowing cloud of gas, the RCW 89.
The ghosting pulsar, MSH 15-52, is located roughly 17,000 light-years from Earth.
Astronomers believe the light of the cosmic catastrophe reached us about 1,700 years ago, making it one of the youngest supernova remnants in the Milky Way system ever observed.