Chandra Release - March 12, 2008

Visual Description: N132D

The X-ray image of the supernova remnant N132D looks like a vivid, multicolored cloud in the shape of a filled-in horseshoe, floating on a black background. The remnant appears in shades of purple, pink, and blue, primarily towards the bottom.  It also has bright splashes of orange, yellow and green, mostly towards the top, creating an ethereal and otherworldly look.  The texture of the nebula resembles delicate, filamentary structures, with long, thin strands of materials stretching across the shape, almost feathery in appearance.  This Chandra X-ray Observatory image shows the debris of a massive star explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy about 160,000 light years from Earth. N132D is the brightest in the Magellanic clouds, and belongs to a rare class of oxygen-rich remnants. Most of the oxygen that we breathe on Earth is thought to have come from explosions similar to this one.  The colors in this image show low energy X-rays (colored in red), intermediate energy X-rays (in green) and high energy X-rays (in blue). Substantial amounts of oxygen are detected in this image, particularly in green regions near the center of the image.