SNR 0519

These delicate wisps of gas make up an object known as SNR B0519-69.0, or SNR 0519 for short. The thin, blood-red shells are actually the remnants from when an unstable star exploded violently as a supernova around 600 years ago. There are several types of supernovae, but for SNR 0519 the star that exploded was a white dwarf — the core of a Sun-like star in the final stages of its life. SNR 0519 is located over 150,000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Dorado (the Dolphinfish), a constellation that also contains most of our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Because of this, this region of the sky is full of intriguing and beautiful deep-sky objects. The LMC orbits the Milky Way Galaxy as a satellite and is the fourth largest in our group of galaxies, called the Local Group. For more information please visit: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1317a/