Chandra Release - October 5, 2010

Visual Description: G327

G327.1-1.1 is an image of a supernova remnant. The image features a nebulous red, orange, blue and purple object in the center of the image, surrounded by smaller white dots all around, like many pricks of light seen through a dark cloth. The larger red part of the object has a somewhat circular shape, like a red cloud or nebula, with the orange, blue and purple featured in an irregular blobby shape at its center. G327.1-1.1 is the aftermath of a massive star that exploded in the Milky Way galaxy. A highly magnetic, rapidly spinning neutron star called a pulsar was left behind after the explosion and is producing a wind of relativistic particles, seen in X-rays by Chandra and XMM-Newton (blue and purple) as well as in the radio data (red-orange). This structure is called a pulsar wind nebula. The larger red circular structure shows radio emission from the blast wave, and the composite image also contains infrared data from the 2MASS survey (white) that shows the stars in the field.