The
bright blue supernova SN 1996cr has been identified by the Chandra and Hubble space telescopes
in a nearby spiral galaxy.
In
this image, the supernova appears as the bright, blue source near the lower
right hand corner of the image. Chandra data appears in blue and Hubble data is
shown in yellow, red (hydrogen emissions), cyan and light blue (oxygen
emissions). The Circinus galaxy which fills most of the image sits 12 million light
years away from Earth.
The
supernova exploded over a decade ago, but astronomers only first
singled it out as a bright object in a 2001 Chandra image. Clues from the
European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope led the team to search for matching images
in data archives from 18 different telescopes — a prime example of
"Internet astronomy."
— NASA/CXC and SPACE.com Staff
Credit: NASA/CXC/Columbia/F.Bauer
et al, NASA/STScI/UMD/A.Wilson et al.
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