Blobs in space - the legacy of a nova 18/09/1997
The prolific number of eruptions by the recurrent nova T Pyxidis has attracted the attention of many telescopes. The image on the left, taken by a ground-based telescope, shows shells of gas around the star that were blown off during several eruptions.
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Image Credit: Mike Shara, Bob Williams, and David Zurek (Space Telescope Science Institute); Roberto Gilmozzi (European Southern Observatory); Dina Prialnik (Tel Aviv University); and NASA.  

The prolific number of eruptions by the recurrent nova T Pyxidis has attracted the attention of many telescopes.

The image on the left, taken by a ground-based telescope, shows shells of gas around the star that were blown off during several eruptions.

Closer inspection by the Hubble Space Telescope (right-hand image), however, reveals that the shells are not smooth at all. In fact, this high-resolution image shows that the shells are actually more than 2,000 gaseous blobs packed into an area that is 1 light-year across. Resembling shrapnel from a shotgun blast, the blobs may have been produced by the nova explosion, the subsequent expansion of gaseous debris, or collisions between fast-moving and slow- moving gas from several eruptions. False color has been applied to this image to enhance details in the blobs.

T Pyxidis is 6,000 light-years away in the dim southern constellation Pyxis, the Mariner's Compass.

 
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