Description: This composite image of data from Chandra (blue) and Hubble (yellow and purple) depicts the scene of a supernova explosion's aftermath. The X-ray data reveal a bullet-like structure to the lower right that appears to have been blown out of the remnant. The detection of the bullet, which is traveling at some 5 million miles per hour, is evidence that the explosion that created the remnant was not symmetrical.

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/n49/

Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Gift line: X-ray: (NASA/CXC/Penn State/S.Park et al.); Optical: NASA/STScI/UIUC/Y.H.Chu & R.Williams et al