The shell of a massive exploded star captured in X-ray light
Authors
Iain Todd is BBC Sky at Night Magazine's Content Editor. He fell in love with the night sky when he caught his first glimpse of Orion, aged 10.
A ghostly supernova remnant appears in X-ray and optical light.
The remnants of an exploded star appear in high definition, captured by two observatories orbiting our planet.
The Chandra X-ray Observatory captured X-ray data and the Hubble Space Telescope observed optical light to produce a composite image of this object, LMC N63A.
It is a supernova remnant: the exploded remains of a massive star.
As a massive star begins using up its fuel, it can no longer produce enough energy to withstand the gravity of its own mass, and so it collapses with such intensity that it explodes in an event known as a supernova.
This ghostly shell of the former star is now all that remains.
Iain Todd is BBC Sky at Night Magazine's Content Editor. He fell in love with the night sky when he caught his first glimpse of Orion, aged 10.
