- Original Caption Released with Image:
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Dusty Supernova Remnant Poster Figure 1 | X-ray, Visible, Infrared Figure 2 |
The supernova remnant1E0102.2-7219 (see inset in figure 1) sits next
to the nebula N76 in a bright, star-forming region of the Small Magellanic
Cloud, a satellite galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy located about 200,000
light-years from Earth. A supernova remnant is made up of the messy bits
and pieces of a massive star that exploded, or went supernova. The image
on the right shows glowing dust grains in three wavelengths of infrared
radiation: 24 microns (red) measured by the multiband imaging photometer
aboard NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope; and 8.0 microns (green) and 3.6
microns (blue) measured by Spitzer's infrared array camera. The red bubble
is a dust envelope around the supernova remnant E0102, which is being
heated by the shock wave created in the explosion of the remnant's massive
progenitor star some 1,000 years ago. Most of the blue stars are in the
Small Magellanic Cloud, though some are in our own galaxy.
The close-up of E0102 (figure 2) is a composite of the infrared
observations by Spitzer (red), an optical image (0.5 microns) captured by
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (green), and X-ray measurements by NASA's
Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue). The X-ray ring is generated when the
reverse shock slams into stellar material that was expelled during the
explosion.
- Image Credit:
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NASA/JPL-Caltech/ UC Berkeley
Image Addition Date:
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2006-06-06
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