These are the intricate filaments of faint supernova remnant Simeis 147. Seen towards the constellation Taurus it covers nearly 3 degrees (6 full moons) on the sky corresponding to a width of 160 light-years at the stellar debris cloud's estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. It is one of the faintest objects in the sky, discovered using a 25" Schmidt camera in 1952 by G.A Shajn and V.E. Hase at the Crimean Astrophyical Observatory at Simeis (in the former U.S.S.R). It was also imaged independently at Palomar by the 48" "Samuel Oschin" Schmidt camera on red photographic plates at roughly the same time period.
This supernova remnant has an apparent age of about 100,000 years - meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 100,000 years ago - but this expanding remnant is not the only aftermath. The cosmic catastrophe also left behind a spinning neutron star or pulsar, all that remains of the original star's core. (Text adapted from Astronomy Picture of the Day)

This image has been chosen as NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day for November 29, 2005.

Remarkable features Click the image to view and interact with the hi-res image. LBN826 is a nebula, 7'x7' large. HR2013 is the most brilliant star in this field. Its magnitude is 5.56, so it is just barely visible to the naked eyes. HR1902 have a visual magnitude of 5.83.    Find Chart The position of Simeis 147 (in the red circle) in the constellation of Taurus. Image from Cartes du Ciel.

This image is a composite from black and white images taken with the Palomar Observatory's 48-inch (1.2-meter) Samuel Oschin Telescope as a part of the second National Geographic Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS II). The images 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: Caltech, Palomar Observatory, Digitized Sky Survey.

In order to produce the color image seen here, I worked with a total of 66 different frames, 33 for each color band, coming from 8 different plates taken between 1988 and 1997. Original file is 17,067x13,508 pixels with a resolution of about 1 arcsec per pixel. The image show an area of sky large 4.7° x 3.8° (for comparison, the full-Moon is about 0.5° in diameter).
Color composite, copyright: Davide De Martin.

Other images of the same celestial field found online

• http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/Semeis.html by Robert Gendler;
• http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020830.html by Steve Mandel;
• http://www.astropix.com/HTML/B_WINTER/SH2_240.HTM by Jerry Lodriguss;
• http://www.hesnet.net/candy/gallery/ultimategallery/indexga.htm by Paolo Candy.