Chandra Release - March 24, 2011

Visual Description: Tycho's Supernova Remnant

Tycho's supernova remnant is the subject of this image, which shows a bright blue and red-purple glowing object in the middle of a starry sky. The shape of the remnant appears as a circular or spherical structure, with a bright blue rim and fingers of red-purple material seemingly coming towards the viewer.  This image comes from a very deep Chandra observation of the Tycho remnant, produced by the explosion of a white dwarf star in our Galaxy. Low-energy X-rays (red) in the image show expanding debris from the supernova explosion and high energy X-rays (blue) show the blast wave, a shell of extremely energetic electrons. These high-energy X-rays show a pattern of X-ray "stripes" never previously seen in a supernova remnant.  The stellar background is from the Digitized Sky Survey and only shows stars outside the remnant.