The Fading Ghost of a Long-Dead Star

HBH 3 is about 150 light-years in diameter, ranking it amongst the largest known supernova remnants. It is also possibly one of the oldest: Astronomers estimate the original explosion may have happened anywhere from 80,000 to one million years ago.

In 2016, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope detected very high-energy light — called gamma rays — coming from the region near HBH 3. This emission may be coming from gas in one of the neighboring star-forming regions, excited by powerful particles emitted by the supernova blast.

The Spitzer Space Telescope is one of NASA’s four Great Observatories — along with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory — and will celebrate its 15th birthday in space on Aug. 25. Spitzer sees the universe in infrared light, which is slightly less energetic than the optical light we can see with our eyes. In this image, taken in March 2010, infrared wavelengths of 3.6 microns have been mapped to blue, and 4.5 microns to red. The white color of the star-forming region is a combination of both wavelengths, while the HBH3 filaments radiate only at the longer 4.5-micron wavelength.

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at IPAC at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information on Spitzer can be found at its website:
http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/

Contacts and sources:
Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory