Some 8,000 years ago, a massive star exploded and NASA astronomers looking through the Hubble Space Telescope spotted some of the remains.
NASA unveiled the new image in a news release Thursday. It is a mosaic of six Hubble-captured images that represents a section of a nebula that spans two light years across itself.
"Called the Veil Nebula, the debris is one of the best-known supernova remnants, deriving its name from its delicate, draped filamentary structures," NASA said in its release. "The entire nebula is 110 light-years across, covering six full moons on the sky as seen from Earth, and resides about 2,100 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan."
NASA is celebrating a quarter of a century of the Hubble Telescope, the space component for which was launched in 1990.
"This close-up look unveils wisps of gas, which are all that remain of what was once a star 20 times more massive than our sun," NASA stated. "The fast-moving blast wave from the ancient explosion is plowing into a wall of cool, denser interstellar gas, emitting light. The nebula lies along the edge of a large bubble of low-density gas that was blown into space by the dying star prior to its self-detonation."
