Chandra Release - December 19, 2003

Visual Description: N63A

The image of the supernova remnant N63A combines two kinds of light. It shows a large, dark blue, ethereal circular shape with pops of wispy red and a central bright yellow-green shape near the center resembling a distorted triangle, or perhaps a smudged three leaf clover, all on a black background.  In the image, Chandra captured the glowing shell created by the destruction of the massive star. X-rays from Chandra are shown in the dark blue, combined with optical (yellow-green) and radio (red) data of N63A, which is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud.   The X-ray glow is from material heated to about ten million degrees Celsius by a shock wave generated by the supernova explosion. The age of the remnant is estimated to be in the range of 2,000 to 5,000 years.  The optical and radio light are brightest in the central region of the remnant, which appears as a clover-shaped "hole" in the X-ray image. The hole is produced by absorption of X-rays in a dense cloud of cooler gas and dust on the side of the remnant nearest the Earth. Fluffy crescent-shaped X-ray features that appear around the very edge of the remnant are thought to be fragments of high-speed matter shot out from the star when it exploded, like shrapnel from a bomb.