Like a team of forensic detectives in a television show that could be called “CSI: Milky Way,” a University of Chicago astrophysicist and his associates are piecing together how a mysterious infrared ring got left around a dead star that displays a magnetic field trillions of times more intense than Earth’s.

The most recent supernova in our Galaxy has been discovered by tracking the rapid expansion of it is remains. This result, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and NRAO's Very Large Array (VLA), has implications for understanding how often supernovas explode in the Milky Way galaxy.