This combination image shows N49, the aftermath of a supernova explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud. A new long scrutiny from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals evidence for a bullet-shaped object being blown out of debris field left over from an exploded star.In order to detect this bullet, researchers used Chandra to observe N49 for more than 30 hours. Using the new Chandra data, the age of N49 as it appears in the image is thought to be about 5,000 years and the energy of the explosion is predictable to be about twice that of an average supernova. These preliminary results suggest that the original explosion was caused by the collapse of a massive star.
