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NOIRLab releases jaw-dropping images, video of remnants from massive star explosion | Astronomy.com

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NOIRLab releases jaw-dropping images, video of remnants from massive star explosion | Astronomy.com


The wisps of gasoline inform the story of a monumental explosion.

The Vela supernova exploded into an enormous array of delicate filaments and veils of gasoline nearly 11,000 years in the past. Now, you may discover the glowing, gassy aftermath in a stunning new portrait of the cosmic corpse. Scientists took the information for the picture with the Darkish Vitality Digicam (DECam), an instrument mounted to the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope in Chile. The telescope is operated by the Nationwide Science Basis’s ground-based astronomy analysis institute, the Nationwide Optical-Infrared Astronomy Analysis Laboratory (NOIRLab).

At 1.3 gigapixels, the picture is without doubt one of the largest ever created of this object. To place this in perspective, one gigapixel equals one billion pixels.

The Vela supernova

The picture above was launched March 12. You’ll be able to learn the full press release here. You may also go here to manually “zoom” around the image on NOIRLab’s website.

Positioned about 800 light-years from Earth within the Vela constellation, the supernova remnant is without doubt one of the closest to us and spans almost 100 light-years. The sunshine that we see is emitted by gasoline heated by the shockwave from the supernova explosion. Per the NOIRLab launch, “When the star exploded 11,000 years in the past, its outer layers have been violently stripped away and flung into the encompassing area, driving the shockwave that’s nonetheless seen right now.”

The DECam is without doubt one of the strongest cameras on the planet. It was initially constructed to hold out the Darkish Vitality Survey, which captured gentle from lots of of 1000’s of galaxies as much as 8 billion light-years away. One picture taken with DECam is about 570 megapixels.

Separate photographs have been taken with completely different narrowband filters, every for observing gentle from completely different ionized components. These photographs have been later mixed to create a false-color picture.

Different options captured by DECam embrace the remnant’s neutron star, the Vela Pulsar. Along with the pulsar, the picture showcases open star clusters, planetary nebulas, and globular star clusters.



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