Tour: NASA's Chandra Discovers Possible Supernova Remnant in Galactic Center

Astronomers may have found a supernova remnant in an intriguing neighborhood of our galactic downtown.

This new supernova remnant, if confirmed, would be one of the closest ever discovered to the supermassive black hole at the central region of the Milky Way Galaxy, an exotic region crammed with massive stars, long threads of magnetic fields and dense clouds of gas orbiting rapidly around the Galactic center.

The evidence for this supernova remnant, located about 26,000 light-years from Earth, comes from X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton. The X-ray data reveal a “blob” of X-ray emission that may come from the remains of a massive star that self-destructed as a supernova, buried within a larger cloud of expanding gas.

If this is indeed a supernova remnant, then it is expanding at about two million miles per hour and is at least about 1,700 years old. Previously, observations with NASA’s now-retired SOFIA telescope had shown evidence for an expanding shell of gas surrounding Sgr C. This gave astronomers a hint that a stellar explosion had occurred in the same spot.

Supernova remnants are the expanding remains of exploded stars and provide elements — like iron, oxygen, and silicon — that are critical for the formation of planets and for life as we know it to form and flourish.