Buy this Cassiopeia A space photo. High quality Chandra picture, slide, or Duratrans backlit transparency. NASA photo C2002-Cas A. Wide variety of sizes. The 320 year old remnant of a massive star that exploded. Located in the constellation Cassiopeia, it is 10 light years across and 10,000 light years from Earth. In August of 1999, NASA released an image of Cassiopeia A, a supernova remnant revealed in never-before-seen X-ray detail. The "Cas A" image, as it has come to be known, shows remarkable structure in the debris of a gigantic stellar explosion, as well as an enigmatic source in the center, which could be a rapidly spinning neutron star or black hole. The Chandra X-ray Observatory image of Cas A ushered in a new era of X-ray astronomy. This image was produced from the archives to celebrate the anniversary of Chandra’s first light. The low, medium, and higher X-ray energies of the Chandra data are shown as red, green, and blue respectively. August 19, 2002 Credits: NASA/CXC/SAO CXC operated for NASA by Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory |