The last screams of light emitted by a dying star have been preserved in a series of eerily beautiful images, slowly echoing across the cosmos.
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured in spectacular detail the flash of light that followed a massive star going supernova in 2016, as the glow spread outward over a period of more than five years.
The resulting animation of stitched-together images is a treasure trove of information about the evolution of dying stars, and the dust surrounding the supernova in its home galaxy of Centaurus A.
"A good everyday analogy is to imagine the finale of a fireworks show – the bright burst of light from a shell at the end of the show will light up the smoke from earlier shells that is still lingering in the area," says astronomer Stephen Lawrence of Hofstra University in the US.