Astronomers using the Chandra X-ray telescope made a pretty nifty observation of the supernova remnant Puppis A.
This pretty picture (click to embiggen) is a combination of X-ray and optical observations, and it shows just how impressively huge a supernova event can be. Attend: Puppis A formed more than three millennia ago when a massive star exploded at the end of its life. Over time the cloud of debris expanded, forming this intricately woven web of filaments of gas. Only the outer layers of the star exploded outwards, though. The core of the star collapsed to form a neutron star, an ultradense object with the mass of a star like the Sun, but squeezed into a ball only a few kilometers across. Neutron stars are funny beasts. Some of them are seen to be screaming across the sky at fantastic speeds, up to hundreds of kilometers per second (fast enough ...
