Right ascension 05 26 01.00 Distance 160,000 ly | Declination −66° 05′ 06.0″ Dimensions 75 ly across | |
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Designations LMC N49, PKS 0525-66, PKS B0525-661, PKS J0525-6604, SNR J052559-660453 | ||
N49 or LMC N49 (PKS 0525-66, PKS B0525-661, PKS J0525-6604, SNR J052559-660453) is the brightest supernova remnant in the Large Magellanic Cloud, approximately 160,000 light-years from Earth. It has been assessed to be roughly 5,000 years old.
The latest pictures of N49 by the Chandra X-ray Observatory have revealed a bullet-shaped object traveling at about 5 million miles an hour away from a bright X-ray and gamma-ray point source, probably a neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field, known as a soft gamma repeater. A particularly strong gamma-ray burst from LMC N49 was detected on March 5, 1979.
References
LMC N49 Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA