An aged stellar explosion gets a new look in this X-ray view taken by the space-based Chandra observatory.

The explosion of the supernova SN 1006 in 1006 AD may have been the brightest ever on record and was easily seen from Earth at the time, earning it the moniker “New Star” despite its role as a stellar death knell. Astronomers believe the supernova originated from a white dwarf about 7,000 light-years from Earth, which absorbed stellar material from a companion star until its mass exceeded its stability limit –known as the Chandrasekhar Limit, about 1.4 times the mass of the Sun – and the star exploded.

In this false-color view taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the X-ray signals emitted from the explosion of SN 1006. The blue filaments running along the upper left and lower right of the image are due to particles accelerated to extremely high energies from the shockwave of SN 1006’s explosion, though astronomers are unsure why they appear to be concentrated in the observed locations.

The fluffy red features appearing throughout the interior of the supernova remnant appear to be generated by the reverse shock, a phenomena that heats ejecta to temperatures in the millions of degrees and is caused by the high pressure behind the explosion’s forward shockwave. The X-ray spectrum of the red areas indicate it is rich in oxygen and other elements typically generated via the nuclear reactions of a supernova event.

-- SPACE.com Staff

Credit: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/J.Hughes et al.