the remnant
These delicate filaments are actually sheets of debris from a stellar explosion in a neighboring galaxy: a supernova remnant within the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby, small companion galaxy to the Milky Way visible from the southern hemisphere.
Denoted N 49, this remnant is from a massive star that died in a supernova blast whose light would have reached Earth thousands of years ago. This filamentary material will eventually be recycled into building new generations of stars. Our own Sun and planets are constructed from similar debris of supernovae that exploded in the Milky Way billions of years ago.
This seemingly gentle structure also harbors a very powerful spinning neutron star that may be the central remnant from the initial blast. The filamentary features visible in the optical image represent the blast wave sweeping through the ambient interstellar medium and nearby dense molecular clouds.
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When I quietly stare at this picture, dazzled by the chaos that now populates each and every one of my fibers, the belief that powered many of my dreams when I was younger comes back into my mind. It is belief that the sky holds many keys for understanding what this life has to teach me. Paradoxical as it is, staring up towards the stars seems to bring me back to earth; flying away into this amazing beauty brings me the hope I need now as never before.
The deafening sound of the explosion has echoed throughout halls that are not only my own. Many things have broken, and pain has blocked the light of many shining stars. However, despite the density of the remnant clouds, despite the terrible sound of the blast, despite how incomprehensible and untouchable this appears, there is still a place left for believing. A place for believing that something beautiful awaits at the end. A place for believing that a sense underlies all this painful learning. A place for believing that new generations of stars will come out of this remnant, and that they will shine as bright as they can, shedding their light over everything broken, healing, granting new dreams and new hopes.
And there will always be powerful neutron stars left.
And there will always be words that will remain to be said and written.
And I will always be short of words,
but this is the challenge I have chosen to embrace,
and I will retain each and every drop of myself,
while I struggle to find the way
and the end.
"Possibility lies on the will of your hope."
