Chronicle: Approximately 15,000 years ago, a star in the constellation of Cygnus exploded leaving a massive supernova. This image depicts a portion of a shockwave from this supernova explosion still expanding past nearby resident stars. The collision of this gaseous shockwave, with a stationary gas cloud, has heated the gas causing it to glow in a breath-taking array of colors; hence the Cygnus Loop. Colors viewed in this image are representative as gases from their respective atomic wavelength. This image is courtesy of the WFPC2 (Wide Field Planetary Camera 2) resident on the HST. The main mirror aboard the Hubble Space Telescope is 2.4 meters (7.9 feet) in diameter, the largest aperture in low Earth orbit.
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