This picture shows a supernova remnant captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy, which is about 200,000 light years away. On the scale of the universe, this supernova was considered to be a very close one. Astronomers estimate that the supernova was appeared about 1,700 years ago, it would have been observable to the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere.

The materials ejected from the supernova are moving at different speeds and directions. The blue part in the picture represents the materials moving toward us, and the red part is the materials moving away from us. Data from the Hubble Space Telescope show that these materials are spreading from the explosion site at an average speed of 3.2 million kilometres per hour. With such speed, we can travel to the Moon and return in just 15 minutes!