Description: A composite image from Chandra (blue) and Spitzer (green and red-yellow) data shows the dusty remains of a collapsed star. The white source at the center is a pulsar that is generating a wind of high-energy particles seen by Chandra that expands into the surrounding environment. The infrared shell that surrounds this pulsar wind is made up of gas and dust that condensed out of debris from the supernova explosion. The nature and quantity of dust produced in supernova explosions is a long-standing mystery, and G54.1+0.3 supplies an important piece to the puzzle.

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: 2010

Persistent URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2010/g541/

Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Gift line: X-ray: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/T.Temim et al.; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech