File:Remnant of an Explosion With a Powerful Kick? (7064827397).jpg

Description: A supernova remnant located about 14,700 light years from Earth toward the center of the Milky Way.

G350.1+0.3 is a young and exceptionally bright supernova remnant in our Galaxy. While many supernova remnants are nearly circular, G350.1+0.3 is strikingly asymmetrical as seen in a new composite image of X-rays from Chandra (gold) and infrared data from Spitzer (light blue). Astronomers think that this bizarre shape is due to the stellar debris field expanding into a nearby cloud of cold molecular gas. With an age of between 600 and 1,200 years old, G350.1+0.3 is in the same time frame as other famous supernovas that formed the Crab and SN 1006 supernova remnants. However, it is unlikely that anyone on Earth would have seen the explosion because of the obscuring gas and dust that lies along our line of sight to the remnant.

Creator/Photographer: Chandra X-ray Observatory

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. The mirrors on Chandra are the largest, most precisely shaped and aligned, and smoothest mirrors ever constructed. Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe. The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Medium: Chandra telescope x-ray

Date: 2012

Image ID: 500

Persistent URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/g350/

Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Gift line: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/I.Lovchinsky et al, IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech