Kangaroo Supernova

Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/Penn State/S.Park & J.Lee); IR (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

A pur­ple kan­ga­roo lurks in a back­ground of stars in this image from NASA’s Chan­dra X-ray Obser­va­tory.

Explore the super­nova rem­nant SNR 0104–72.3 in the Small Mag­el­lanic Cloud. What shapes or pat­terns do you see? Leave a note below.

SNR 0104 is all that remains of a star that blew itself apart. Usu­ally super­novae are the result of the col­lapse of a super­mas­sive star. These types of stars are huge and burn through their nuclear fuel just a few mil­lion years after they form. As they col­lapse, the star becomes super hot and unsta­ble. Another type of super­novae, what astronomers call a Type Ia super­nova, occurs when a dead white dwarf orbit­ing a larger star explodes. The white dwarf sucks mate­r­ial off of the larger star. As this mate­r­ial piles up, the star becomes super-hot. Reac­tions inside the star go hay­wire and the star explodes. Super­nova give off so much energy in the form of heat and light that they briefly out­shine an entire galaxy. Observers from Earth have seen some super­novae dur­ing the daytime.

Some super­nova rem­nants, such as the Kepler and Tycho super­nova, have cir­cu­lar shapes. Oth­ers, like the Crab Neb­ula, have jum­bled and messy insides.

SNR 0104 is found about 190,000 light-years from Earth in the Small Mag­el­lanic Cloud. The SMC is a com­pan­ion dwarf galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy. The SMC and the Large Mag­el­lanic Cloud appear as dim clouds of light in the night sky of the south­ern hemisphere.