Chandra Release - September 8, 2016

Visual Description: RCW 103

The X-ray and optical image of the RCW 103 supernova remnant depicts a spherical, but slightly flattened looking object in space. This nebula is in the center of the image and is densely surrounded by little points of light, which are primarily stars. The nebula is predominantly blue, pale red and rich yellow, with some tiny pops of green and aqua hues, while the surrounding stars are mostly white. The nebula's texture is somewhat mottled or fuzzy. This composite image shows not only RCW 103 but also its central source, known officially as 1E 161348-5055 (1E 1613, for short), as a bright blue-white spot in the center.  This may be the slowest spinning neutron star yet detected. The image is made from three bands of X-ray light detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory where the lowest energy X-rays are red, the medium band is green, and the highest energy X-rays are blue. The X-ray data were combined with an optical image from the Digitized Sky Survey.