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Buy photo prints of these images
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Pencil Nebula NGC
2736 and surroundings |
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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 a star that 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 below, 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.
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Pencil
Nebula NGC 2736 and surroundings in
Vela
View and interact with the high-resolution image!
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The image is available for
Museum,
Planetariums, Publishers
and Authors in very high-resolution
(up to 5,220
×
4,404 pixels, can be printed up to
35
×
29 inches and more).
Please, e-mail me
with your request. |
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 Remarkable
features
Click the image
to
view and interact with the hi-res image.
NGC 2736 is the Pencil Nebula, a supernova
shockwave part of the Vela supernova remnant. |
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Find
Chart
The
position of the Pencil Nebula NGC 2736 (in the circle)
in Vela constellation.
Image from Megastar. |
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In order to produce the color image
seen here, I worked with data coming from a number of
different photographic plates taken by the UK Schmidt Telescope starting
from 1975. The original file is
about 23 Megapixels with a resolution of about
1 arcsec per pixel. The image show an
area of sky large 1.5°
×
1.2° (for
comparison, the full-Moon has a diameter of about 0.5°).
Copyright:
Davide De Martin (http://www.skyfactory.org).
This image is a composite from black
and white images taken with the Anglo Australian
Observatory's 48-inch (1.2-meter) UK Schmidt
Telescope.
Credit:
Anglo-Australian
Observatory,
UK Schmidt
Telescope, Digitized
Sky Survey. |
