ExploraTour: A Peek into the Lives of the Stars
Cygnus Loop - Another Exploded Star.
This is a picture of the Cygnus Loop taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is the gas left over after a star exploded some 15,000 years ago (about the time our early ancestors were roaming the Earth looking for food).
The beautiful colors in this image tell an interesting story. The blue regions show where oxygen atoms can be found in the gas cloud. The red shows where sulfur atoms exist in the cloud. Sulfur is a substance that smells like rotten eggs. Green marks places where there are hydrogen atoms. All of these different substances will eventually become part of new stars and planets.