Description: E0102-72 is a supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. Located in the constellation Tucana, this galaxy is 190,000 light years from Earth. The remnant is approximately a thousand years old. Stretching across forty light years of space, the expanding multimillion degree shell of gas resembles a flaming cosmic wheel.

Creator/Photographer: Chandra X-ray Observatory

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. The mirrors on Chandra are the largest, most precisely shaped and aligned, and smoothest mirrors ever constructed. Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe. The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Medium: Chandra telescope x-ray

Date: 1999

Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Gift line: NASA/CXC/SAO