Resembling the puffs of smoke and sparks from a summer fireworksdisplay in this image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, thesedelicate filaments are actually sheets of debris from a stellarexplosion in a neighboring galaxy. Hubble's target was a supernovaremnant within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a nearby, smallcompanion galaxy to the Milky Way visible from the southernhemisphere.

Denoted N 49, or DEM L 190, this remnant is from a massive starthat died in a supernova blast whose light would have reachedEarth thousands of years ago. This filamentary material willeventually be recycled into building new generations of stars inthe LMC. Our own Sun and planets are constructed from similardebris of supernovae that exploded in the Milky Way billions ofyears ago.

Credit: NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)