As seen from Earth supernove remnant spans a region of sky more than 40 times the size of a full moon, astronomer Robert Fesen and his colleagues report.

A cloud of expanding gas in space is the largest supernova remnant ever seen in the sky, a new study confirms.

The Milky Way has some 300 known supernova remnants, each made of debris from an exploded star mixed with interstellar material swept up by the blast. This supersized one, located in the constellation Antlia, isn't necessarily the biggest of all physically, but thanks to its proximity to us, it looks the biggest. As seen from Earth, it spans a region of sky more than 40 times the size of a full moon, astronomer Robert Fesen of Dartmouth College and his colleagues report February 25 at arXiv.org. The Antlia remnant appears about three times as large as the previous champion, the Vela supernova remnant (SN: 7/8/20).  Read more...