Dead star circled by light

New images from ESO's Very Large Telescope and other telescopes reveal a rich landscape of stars and glowing clouds of gas in one of our closest neighboring galaxies, the Small Magellanic Cloud. The pictures have allowed astronomers to identify an elusive stellar corpse left behind by a 2,000-year-old supernova explosion. The MUSE instrument was used to establish where this object is hiding, and Chandra X-ray Observatory data confirmed its identity as an isolated neutron star.

Source

 

Credit: ESO/NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)/F. Vogt et al.

This new picture created from images from telescopes on the ground and in space tells the story of the hunt for an elusive missing object hidden amid a complex tangle of gaseous filaments in one of our nearest neighboring galaxies, the Small Magellanic Cloud.

The reddish background image comes from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and reveals the wisps of gas forming the supernova remnant 1E 0102.2-7219 in green. The red ring with a dark center is from the MUSE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope and the blue and purple images are from the NASA Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The blue spot at the center of the red ring is an isolated neutron star with a weak magnetic field, the first identified outside the Milky Way.

Source / Image Courtesy

 

New images from ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and other telescopes reveal a rich landscape of stars and glowing clouds of gas in one of our closest neighbouring galaxies, the Small Magellanic Cloud.

The pictures have allowed astronomers to identify an elusive stellar corpse buried among filaments of gas left behind by a 2000-year-old supernova explosion.

The MUSE instrument was used to establish where this elusive object is hiding, and existing Chandra X-Ray Observatory data confirmed its identity as an isolated neutron star.