Overview

• NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the Blanco 4-meter telescope in Chile, the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope and Hubble have discovered evidence of at least two supernovas in the supernova remnant 30 Doradus B (30 Dor B) in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbor galaxy of our Milky Way.
• The discovery was made possible by detecting a shell of X-Rays rippling out from the remnant that stretches 130 light-years across and evidence of a pulsar — a husk of a dead star that throws off jets of particles as it spins.
• The shell is far too big to have come from the one supernova that they knew made 30 Dor B 5,000 years ago, suggesting several supernovas have happened within the region in the past.
• The larger, faint shell of X-rays is too big to have resulted from the same supernova that resulted in the pulsar and the bright X-rays seen in the center of 30 Dor B.
• The research can help astronomers learn more about the lives of massive stars, and the effects of their supernova explosions.