Chandra Release - January 28, 2013

Visual Description: DEM L50

An image of a purplish-pink and rusty-bronze nebula with blue, white and bronze stars in the background is shown. This composite image is of the superbubble DEM L50 (a.k.a. N186) located in the Large Magellanic Cloud about 160,000 light years from Earth. Superbubbles are found in regions where massive stars have formed in the last few million years. The massive stars produce intense radiation, expel matter at high speeds, and race through their evolution to explode as supernovas. The winds and supernova shock waves carve out huge cavities called superbubbles in the surrounding gas. X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in pink, and optical data from the Magellanic Cloud Emission Line Survey (MCELS) are colored in red, green and blue. The shape of DEM L50 is approximately an ellipse, and textured.  It resembles a sea shell floating in dark water with hundreds of tiny blue, bronze and white pearls floating around it. A supernova remnant named SNR N186 D located on its northern edge.