Chandra Release - February 24, 2017

Visual Description: Supernova 1987A

Supernova 1987A is a supernova that was discovered in 1987 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby galaxy. The composite image of Supernova 1987A shows a brightly glowing, circular donut-shaped object in the center on a solid black background. The data is colored in shades of bright orange, purple, green and pink. This composite image contains X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), visible light data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (green), and submillimeter wavelength data from the international Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile (red).