Chandra Release - June 26, 2013

Visual Description: G1.9+0.3

This X-ray and optical image captures the supernova remnant G1.9+0.3. The debris from the exploded star is shown in a small area in the center of very pale shades of pink, orange, and blue with a dark background behind it and large white sources dotted around it. The shape of the object looks like the outline of a rounded football, mostly hollow or dim in the center. A Chandra observation of G1.9_0.3 provides important details about the most recent supernova known to have exploded in the Milky Way at the time of observation. The explosion would have been visible from Earth a little more than a hundred years ago if it had not been heavily obscured by dust and gas. G1.9+0.3 was most likely created when a white dwarf star underwent a thermonuclear detonation and was destroyed – either after merging with another white dwarf or by pulling too much material from an orbiting companion star. The Chandra data show that most of the X-ray emission is “synchrotron radiation,” produced by extremely energetic electrons accelerated in the rapidly expanding blast wave of the supernova. The X-ray study also reveals that the explosion that created G1.9+0.3 was asymmetrical and unusually energetic.