+, Collapsed Star, Composite
Image from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope shows the dusty remains of a collapsed star. The dust is flying past and engulfing a nearby family of stars. Scientists think the stars in the image are part of a stellar cluster in which the a supernova exploded. The material ejected in the explosion is now blowing past these stars at high velocities. The composite image of + shows X-rays from Chandra in blue, and data from Spitzer in green and red-yellow. The white source near the center of the image is a dense, rapidly rotating neutron star, or "pulsar," left behind after a core-collapse supernova explosion. The pulsar generates a wind of high-energy particles that expands into the surrounding environment, illuminating the material ejected in the supernova explosion. As the cold dust expands into the surroundings, it is heated and lit up by the stars in the cluster so that it is observable in the infrared. The dust closest to the stars is the hottest and is seen to glow in yellow in the image. In +, astronomers are observing pristine dust before any such destruction. Release date March 29, 2010.
Size: 3600px × 3547px
Photo credit: © Photo Researchers / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 2010, 21st, astronomical, astronomy, body, burst, celestial, century, cluster, collapsed, composite, deep, exploding, explosion, +, heavenly, image, neutron, object, pulsar, radiation, remnant, rotating, science, sky, sn, snr, space, star, stellar, supernova
