Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2021 April 14

                   The Pencil Nebula Supernova Shock Wave
           Image Credit & Copyright: Greg Turgeon & Utkarsh Mishra

   Explanation: This supernova shock wave plows through interstellar space
   at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Near the middle and moving up in
   this sharply detailed color composite, thin, bright, braided filaments
   are actually long ripples in a cosmic sheet of glowing gas seen almost
   edge-on. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its elongated appearance suggests its
   popular name, the Pencil Nebula. The Pencil Nebula is about 5
   light-years long and 800 light-years away, but represents only a small
   part of the Vela supernova remnant. The Vela remnant itself is around
   100 light-years in diameter, the expanding debris cloud of a star that
   was seen to explode about 11,000 years ago. Initially, the shock wave
   was moving at millions of kilometers per hour but has slowed
   considerably, sweeping up surrounding interstellar material. In the
   featured narrow-band, wide field image, red and blue colors track,
   primarily, the characteristic glows of ionized hydrogen and oxygen
   atoms, respectively.

                   Portal Universe: Random APOD Generator
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