Like smoke rings wafting inside the air, the pink and orange wisps of the Vela supernova remnant disperse all through space in this 554-million-pixel image captured by the ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope in Chile.
Positioned some 800 light-years away inside the constellation Vela the Sails, the Vela supernova remnant is what stays of a big star that exploded larger than 11,000 years prior to now. As a result of the doomed star’s outer layers raced outward, they tore by way of surrounding gasoline, compressing and heating it as a lot as kind the enticing filaments seen above.
Merely outside of physique to the upper left resides the collapsed core of the as quickly as gigantic star. This neutron star moreover happens to be a pulsar, emitting radiation and spinning on its axis 10 situations per second.
In keeping with an ESO press launchresearchers used the wide-field OmegaCam instrument to grab this shot of the expansive Vela supernova remnant, which could match 9 Full Moons inside the same physique.