Chandra Release - March 29, 2010

Visual Description: G54.1+0.3

A  composite image of the supernova remnant G54.1+0.3 features a large, bright blue object in the left-center, partially tucked in in a semicircle from 11 o’clock to 3 o’clock by a larger red-orange nebula, and dotted by smaller green, blue and yellow dots.  At the center of the blue nebula is a bright white dot with a light circular outline around it.  The 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 a supernova exploded. The material ejected in the explosion is now blowing past these stars at high velocities. The composite image of G54.1+0.3 shows X-rays from Chandra in blue, and data from Spitzer in green (shorter wavelength infrared) and red-yellow (longer wavelength infrared). The white source near the center of the image is a dense, rapidly rotating pulsar, left behind after a core-collapse supernova explosion. The pulsar generates a wind of high-energy particles -- seen in the Chandra data -- that expands into the surrounding environment, illuminating the material ejected in the supernova explosion.