Sibling Supernova Remnants

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.

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.