With its red eye glittering in the southeastern sky just after sunset, Taurus the Bull is one of the most arresting winter constellations. Most stargazers know it well, but what many don't know is that the familiar constellation is also a very far out tourist destination. Our solar system is moving through a cloud of gas and dust from between the stars. Most science fiction movies portray space as cold, black and empty. In fact, the voids between the stars are anything but vacuous.
Interstellar space is permeated by clouds of gas and dust.
Presenting it as a scientific study is a bit of a reach. By studying the explosion scientists hope to unravel an extragalactic mystery. Astronomers are increasingly convinced that supermassive black holes lie at the centers of most large galaxies. It's a classic case of truth being stranger than fiction. As gas in the accretion disk falls into the hole it heats up and glows so brightly in x-rays that we can detect them a billion light years away.