Like a flashbulb illuminating fog, light from the outburst of a star has revealed its dusty surroundings. The light bouncing off the dust, which astronomers call a light echo, hasn’t been observed in our galaxy since 1936. The new echo has been captured in exquisite detail by the Hubble Space Telescope, reports Howard Bond of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and his colleagues in the March 27 Nature.
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