Chandra 3-Color X-ray Image of N 63A

Chandra's image of N63A shows material heated to about ten million degrees Celsius by a shock wave generated by the supernova explosion. The fluffy crescent-shaped X-ray features that appear around the edge of the remnant are thought to be fragments of high-speed matter shot out from the star when it exploded, like shrapnel from a bomb. The colors red, green and blue in the image correspond to low, medium and high-energy X-rays, respectively. The image is 112 arcsec per side.