images

The Vela supernova remnant

by

AAO/DSS/D.De Martin/Novapix

Reference

a-snv11-00076

Date

2007-02-15

About 12,000 years ago a massive star in the constellation of Vela exploded. In the optical photograph shown here, the 100+ light-years span spherical blast wave is shown in detail. As gas flies away from the detonated star, it reacts with the interstellar medium, knocking away closely held electrons from even heavy elements. When the electrons recombine with these atoms, light in many different colors and energy bands is producedThe Vela SNR image presented here is one of the largest deep-sky image ever released. The image's field of view is enormous : it shows a plague of sky nearly wide as 19 times the apparent diameter of the full Moon.Mosaic images obtained with data coming from 19 different photographic plates taken at the UK Schmidt Observatory.