The Pencil Nebula NGC 2736 and surroundings 
At 500,000 kilometers per hour, a supernova shockwave plows through interstellar space. This shockwave is known as the Pencil Nebula, or NGC 2736, and is part of the Vela supernova remnant, an expanding shell of gas originated from a star exploded about 11,000 years ago. Initially the shockwave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour, but the weight of all the gas it has swept up has slowed it considerably. Pictured above, the shockwave moves from left to right, as can be discerned by the lack of gas on the left.
This image is part of my huge 1-gigapixel image of the Vela supernova remnant, processed to show the faint nebulosity in the field.
Full-res file is about 23 Megapixels with a resolution of about 1 arcsec per pixel. It shows an area of sky large 1,5° x 1,2° (for comparison, the full-Moon has a diameter of about 0,5°).
The image is available for Museum, Planetariums, exhibitions, publishers and authors in very high-resolution. If interested in using the image, please read my policy or e-mail me with your request. Copyright: Davide De Martin.
This color image is based on data coming from several photographic plates taken starting from 1975 through the Anglo Australian Observatory's 48-inch (1.2-meter) UK Schmidt Telescope. The photographs were recorded on two type of glass photographic plates - one sensitive to red light and the other to blue and later they were digitized. Credit: Anglo-Australian Observatory, UK Schmidt Telescope, Digitized Sky Survey. |
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