Astronomy Picture of the Week – Supernova Bubble Resembling Holiday Ornament

This image was made by combining data from two of NASA’s Great Observatories: the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The supernova remnant, cataloged as SNR 0509-67.5, is the result of a type Ia supernova. It is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small galaxy about 160,000 light-years from Earth. The bubble-shaped shroud of gas is 23 light-years across and is expanding at more than 5,000 kilometers per second.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, SAO, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), and J. Hughes (Rutgers University)