There are very rare times in history that people staring up at the stars can catch a phenomenon. In the past few years, only a few things have been seen and yet so many more remain to be discovered. With the things going on here on the humble planet of Earth, one would think it would be hard to find time to look at the stars to find such events, but the Hubble telescope finds way to surprise us despite how long it's been in use, including the capture of the explosive death of a star.
This death of a star, among many other mysterious happenings that occur in the vacuum of space, is considered quite rare to behold according to CNN. The star that had passed was a red giant star, and in its final stages of existence, a mass amount of energy occurs in very quick succession where it blows out its layers and leaves nothing behind but clouds of gas and dust. A rare sight such as this happens so unexpectedly, but like many things in our universe, the destruction of one thing leads to the creation of another, as the remains of the red giant star will turn into a planetary nebular.
Despite the occurrence, one might still wonder why this death of a star would be referred to as something that happens so quickly that, by astronomical terms, it commences in "the blink of an eye" and why it is apparently considered stinky or smelly even with all that destruction. NASA complains that the reason for it bearing such descriptions is because the Calabash Nebula is one that happens to have quite a large amount of sulfur in it, owning up to its description of being a "smelly" event. In addition to that, it even goes on to say that said nebula is called the "Rotten Egg" because of all that sulfur, and one doesn't have to be an astronomer to know the scent of too much sulfur.
As to why it was considered so fast, this is because of the speed in which the gas shown moves, clocking in at close to one million kilometers per hour or 621,371 miles per hour. Perhaps what is even more amazing is the fact that such an event can even be caught on the telescope at that speed, making it truly a rare occurrence. While the death of the star is still considered extremely rare to see, it still leaves more to question as to what else can happen in the mysterious dark beyond as well as what we can pick up with our technology.
