Chandra Release - December 20, 2011

Visual Description: SXP 1062

A wide-field composite image of the pulsar SXP 1062 is shown, which features a sprawling bright orange and red nebula on the left and a much smaller red and blue nebula on the right. The orange nebula appears to be shaped like a heart with wings outspread, while the blue nebula has an incomplete circular shape.  Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton were combined to discover a young pulsar in the remains of a supernova located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC, a small satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. This is shown as a bright white-blue dot in the middle of the smaller blue nebula at right.  This would be the first time a pulsar, a spinning, ultra-dense star, has definitely been found in a supernova remnant in the SMC,.  In this composite image, X-rays from Chandra and XMM-Newton have been colored blue and optical data from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile are colored red and green. The pulsar, known as SXP 1062, is in the middle of the diffuse blue emission inside a red shell. The diffuse X-rays and optical shell are both evidence for a supernova remnant surrounding the pulsar. The optical data also displays spectacular formations of gas and dust in a star-forming region on the left side of the image.