November 14, 2012

Life and death in a star-forming cloud

The aftershock of a stellar explosion rippling through space is captured in this new view of supernova remnant W44, which combines far-infrared and X-ray data from ESA's Herschel and XMM-Newton space observatories. W44, located around 10 000 light-years away within a forest of dense star-forming clouds in the constellation of Aquila, the Eagle, is one of the best examples of a supernova remnant interacting with its parent molecular cloud.

Supernova remnant W44 is the focus of this new image created by combining data from ESA's Herschel and XMM-Newton space observatories. W44 is the vast purple sphere that dominates the left hand side of this image, and measures about 100 light-years across. XMM-Newton data reveal that the remnant is filled with X-ray emission from extremely hot gas. Herschel's three-colour infrared view comprises PACS 70 and 160 micron and SPIRE 250 micron images. X-ray data from XMM-Newton's EPIC instrument for W44 only has been added in light and dark blue to represent high- (2-8 keV) and low-energy (1.2-2 keV) X-ray emission, respectively. Credits: © Quang Nguyen Luong & F. Motte, HOBYS Key Program Consortium, Herschel SPIRE/PACS/ESA consortia ; ESA/XMM-Newton