Veil Nebula: Hubble telescope details shrapnel of exploded star

The Hubble telescope took a photo of the Veil Nebula, a remnant of the Veil supernova that exploded 8,000 years ago.

“The Veil Nebula, left behind by the explosion of a massive star thousands of years ago, is one of the largest and most spectacular supernova remnants in the sky,” NASA says about the colorful and captivating cloud of gas. NASA believes the star that created the doughnut-shaped nebula exploded about 8,000 years ago and that its fiery death could have been witnessed by ancient cultures here on Earth, where the event would have been as bright in our sky as a crescent moon.

The nebula is now about 110 light-years across, but the images used in this video zoom in on a part of it that’s only about two light-years wide.

In addition to the zoom video, NASA also got busy whipping up some special effects of its own in the video below, which offers 3D animation of what a fly-by of the Veil Nebula would look like. In the description of the video, NASA points out that the different colors in the nebula correspond to different types of gases. Red is from hydrogen, green from sulfur and blue from oxygen.

Agencies/Canadajournal