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A Vivid View

More than four centuries after the brilliant star explosion witnessed by Tycho Brahe and other astronomers of the era, NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space observatories and the Calar Alto observatory in Spain captured this image of the supernova remnant. This composite image combines infrared and X-ray observations.

The explosion left a blazing hot cloud of expanding debris (green and yellow). The location of the blast's outer shock wave can be seen as a blue sphere of ultra-energetic electrons. Newly synthesized dust in the ejected material and heated pre-existing dust from the area around the supernova radiate at infrared wavelengths of 24 microns (red). Foreground and background stars in the image are white.