The supernova remnant -- called SNR B0519-69.0 -- is located over 150,000 light-years away in the satellite dwarf galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The image combines a visible light image from the Hubble Space Telescope with an X-ray image from NASA's Earth orbiting Chandra X-ray Telescope.
The super-heated plasma is emitting x-rays which were picked up by Chandra and are shown in blue. The thin glowing red outer hydrogen shells of the supernova remnant are seen in visible light from the Hubble image.
The bubble-shaped remnant is over 23 light-years across and expanding at a rate of 18 million kilometers per hour.
The star that exploded was a white dwarf, the stellar corpse of a sun-like star in the final stages of its life. The white dwarf was in orbit with another star in a binary system, close enough to draw huge volumes of material off its companion.
Eventually it sucked off enough material to become unstable and violently blew itself apart as a thermonuclear or type 1A supernova, briefly outshining an entire galaxy.
From Discovery News
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