The virtuoso California imager Ken Crawford has done it again — this time creating a spectacular image of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (3C 461). Cas A is the relic of a stellar explosion that occurred some 300 years ago as seen on Earth, and at certain wavelengths, it is the brightest extrasolar radio source in the sky.

What makes this image particularly amazing is that Ken overlaid the X-ray image created recently from NASA’s NuSTAR and Chandra instruments onto his optical image, creating a unique picture of this stellar death shroud. The slowly expanding nebula, which was discovered in 1947, lies some 11,000 light-years distant.

For full details on how the image was made, see Ken’s website at www.imagingdeepsky.com/Nebulae/CasA/CasA.htm

Thanks, Ken, for sharing an amazing image!