Dandelion Supernova Revealed in 3-D

For nearly six months during the year 1181, people looked up to the skies to find a new star glittering in the constellation Cassiopeia. Chinese and Japanese astronomers recorded the rare event, an explosion of a star, or supernova. In the centuries since, astronomers have searched for the remains of the blast, but it was not until 2013 that they were finally found. As part of a citizen scientist project, amateur astronomer Dana Patchick—who had sifted through images taken by the now-retired Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE—found a nebula at the site where the supernova had occurred.