What happens when one of the stars in a
binary goes supernova?
This
image combines visible (yellow), ultraviolet (purple) and infrared light (cyan, red and orange) to show two
supernova remnants and their surrounding environment, about 6,000 light-years away.
The younger one is the well-known
Jellyfish Nebula in the center (mostly in yellow).
If we could see it by eye, it would appear
larger than the full moon in the sky.
The filament shown in purple is part of an older, overlapping supernova remnant,
G189.6+3.3.
A
new study used data from
NASA's
Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to piece together their
story.
Astronomers believe that there were two stars in a binary system, then the first one exploded as a supernova,
kicking away its companion, which also exploded as a supernova tens of thousands of years later, creating the superimposed supernova remnants we see today.
The bright star on the right is actually a triple star system named
Propus.