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Super Nova in Centaurus A
This animation represents about 1.5 years of time, omitting the first frame which is a legacy image from 2010. This all happened a bit more than one month after the initial explosion. What you see here is the fading of the supernova, and then the blueish ring that is a light echo that began to propagate outwards immediately after the initial explosion.
The initial explosion caused a burst of light to emit in all directions. That light illuminated the stationary space-dust around the star. As time passed and the light travelled outward, that ring of light got larger and larger, giving the illusion of a shockwave.
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