People Are Amazed By Hubble Telescope's Image Showing Star Explosion From Over 10 Million Light Years Away

People on Reddit are absolutely blown away after seeing what they describe as an ‘amazing’ image of a star exploding, all captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

If you're unfamiliar with the term, a supernova is a massive, awe-inspiring event. It's what happens when a star reaches the end of its life and goes through an intense transformation in its final phase.

As the core of a huge star collapses, it creates a shockwave so powerful that it blasts material out into the universe. It's like watching the star tear itself apart and send its remains flying into space.

Compared to the incredibly long lifespans of stars, these dramatic explosions are over pretty quickly. A supernova can be visible for just a few months or, at most, about a year.

Since they’re so rare—only a very small number of stars can actually go supernova and the flash of light happens so fast, getting to see one in real time is something most people might only experience once in their life, if ever.

What’s even rarer is seeing what are called ‘light echoes’. These are rings or waves of light reflecting off surrounding space dust that appear after the initial explosion, sometimes visible for months or even years.

Something the Hubble Space Telescope has captured is blowing Redditors' minds Nasa

Thankfully, we’ve got technology like the Hubble Space Telescope to catch these cosmic events so we don’t miss them.

Hubble managed to snap images of light echoes spreading out from a supernova that occurred in Centaurus A. That’s a galaxy located in the Centaurus constellation, sitting about 13.05 million light-years away from us here on Earth.

This supernova, known as SN 2016adj, was watched closely by astronomers for more than five years as its energy slowly faded. That’s according to a report from Tech Fragments.

"The data set is remarkable and enabled us to produce very impressive coloured images and animations that exhibit the evolution of the light echoes over a five-year period." said lead scientist Professor Maximillian Stritzinger of Aarhus University.

One person said it was one of their 'favorite images ever captured' in space Reddit

What makes it even cooler is that this light echo, which was recorded by Hubble over a period of about a year and a half, has been transformed into a GIF. And yes, Reddit users are completely mind-blown by it.

"This might be one of my favorite images ever captured. That is so dang cool." replied one.

A second user commented: "Human beings have been around for at least 300,000 years and we all get to see this and so much more."

"Think about that, it's overwhelming. It's our inheritance, cherish it!"

Another person chimed in with: "It's hard to put into words how amazing it feels to observe this. What a privilege. Our species is capable of greatness."

NASA also shared that the light you see in the GIF was moving at a mind-blowing speed—over 10,000 kilometers every second.

That’s faster than we can even wrap our heads around.

Earlier this year, supernovas caught headlines once again when scientists working with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) uncovered what they’re calling one of the biggest and earliest stellar explosions ever found.

This supernova, labeled AT 2023adsv, is believed to have happened about 2 billion years after the Big Bang. It exploded in a large galaxy that existed way back in the early days of the universe.

JADES team member and Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) researcher David Coulter explained how the JWST could take our view of the universe even deeper: "We don't know how many supernovas the JWST will find but we can start to push to the beginning of these first stars and hope to see their explosions."