Chandra X-ray Image of DEM L316
Chandra X-ray data reveal a cat-shaped image produced by the remnants of two exploded stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy about 160,000 light years from Earth. Although the shells of hot gas appear to be colliding, this may be an illusion. Chandra spectra show that the shell of hot gas on the upper left contains considerably more iron than the one on the lower right. This implies that stars with very different ages exploded to produce these objects. The remnant on the upper left is from an old white dwarf star in a binary system, and the one on the lower right is from a much younger massive star, so the apparent proximity of the remnants is probably the result of a chance alignment. In this image, the colors represent different ranges of X-rays, with red, green, and blue representing low, medium, and higher X-ray energies.
Scale: Image is 5.7 arcmin across
(Credit: NASA/CXC/U.Illinois/R.Williams & Y.-H.Chu)

Optical Image of DEM L316
This optical image of DEM L316, two supernova remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, was taken with the Curtis-Schmidt telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). The field of view is the same as the Chandra image above.
Scale: Image is 5.7 arcmin across
(Credit: NOAO/CTIO/U.Illinois/R.Williams & MCELS coll.)