New Twist on an Old Star

New X-ray observations have helped astronomers solve the mystery of an exploding star. Kepler's Supernova first appeared in Earth's skies in 1604. Astronomers the remains of the star -- a big bubble of gas and dust -- to learn about the type of star that exploded. This image, from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, shows that the original star was a white dwarf -- the small, dense core of a once-normal star like the Sun. In the new Chandra image, red represents shows oxygen and other material around the star that has been heated by a blast wave from the star's explosion. Yellow shows iron that formed in the blast, green shows other elements, and blue represents an expanding shockwave. [NASA/CXC/NCSU/S.Reynolds et al.]