The supernova remnant 1E0102.2-7219 (inset) sits next to the emission-line nebula N76 in a bright, star-forming region of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which is located about 200,000 light years from Earth. Image on right shows glowing dust grains in three wavelengths of infrared radiation: 24 microns (red) measured by the Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS) aboard NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope; and 8.0 microns (green) and 3.6 micron (blue) measured by Spitzer's Infrared Array Camera (IRAC). The red bubble is the 120 Kelvin dust envelope around E0102 that is being heated by the shock wave created in the explosion of the 20-solar-mass progenitor star some 1,000 years ago. Most of the blue stars are in the SMC, though some are in our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
The closeup of E0102 on the left is a composite of the infrared observations by Spitzer (red), an optical image (0.5 micron oxygen emission line) captured by the Hubble Space Telescope (green), and X-ray measurements by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory satellite (blue). The X-ray ring is generated when the reverse shock slams into stellar material that was expelled during the explosion.
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