#w44

The pulsar, PSR B1853+01, left behind by the exploding star is a very strong pulsar indeed. Thought to be about 20,000 years old now, B1853+01 spits out waves of light ranging from x-ray to radio and highly charged particles creating a cloud of material and gas around itself. This image uses X-ray and far-infrared data from the Herschel telescope showing us the cloud that was left behind by W44, the bright blue point in the top left region of this cloud is B1853+01. Within this cloud there are high density pockets where the heavier matter is starting to clump together. As the gas gets closer to the outer edge of the cloud, it gets swept through the parent molecular cloud, similar to how water at a beach will propagate through the sand. To the right of the W44 cloud, there are pockets of ionized gas which show where new stars are beginning to form. The pocket to the immediate top right of the cloud has an arc feature which indicates the gas was ionized by highly intense UV radiation from young massive stars. As a result of this supernova, compacted clumps of matter are now traveling off through the molecular cloud soon to become future bright burning stars. -TAZ Image Credit: Herschel/SPIRE/PACS/ESA https://www.herschel.caltech.edu/image/nhsc2012-012a