If you’re a Star Trek fan, you’d think the image above would portray “Nexus” from the movie. Star Trek: Generation. In the film, the Nexus was a ribbon-like extra-dimensional realm that existed outside of normal space-time.
But this is actually the image of the venerable Hubble Space Telescope of the Cygnus Loop. This stunning image of space, in the northern constellation Cygnus swan, shows, at our convenience, a small part of a blast wave emanating from a supernova.
The original supernova eruption exploded a star about 2,600 light-years away. This star was about 20 times larger than our Sun, and it exploded 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. Since then, the remnants have extended 60 light-years from its center.
The shockwave marks the outer edge of the supernova remnant and continues to expand at an incredible speed, around 350 kilometers per second. The interaction of the extracted material and the low-density intercellular material flowing through the shockwave creates a distinctive curtain-like structure as seen in this image.
In Star Trek, if you were inside the Nexus, you existed in an ideal, ideal world. Looking at an incredible image like this makes you realize that something like this is possible.
Here is another, previous Hubble image of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant from 1991, and below it is an image of the famous Will Nebula, inside a large Cygnus supernova fossil.
Source: ESA
