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The Veil Nebula

Ten thousand years ago, before the dawn of recorded human history, a new light must suddenly have appeared in the night sky and faded after a few weeks. Today we know this light was an exploding star and record the colorful expanding cloud as the Veil Nebula. The supernova remnant lies about 1400 light-years away towards the constellation of Cygnus. This supernova remnant actually spans over four times the angular size of the full Moon. The bright star 52 Cygnus is visible with the unaided eye from a dark location but unrelated to the ancient supernova. (Text adapted from Astronomy Picture of the Day)

Full-res file is about 242 Megapixels with a resolution of about 1 arcsec per pixel. It shows an area of sky large 4,2° x 4,4° (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 between 1988 and 1995 through 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 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: Caltech, Palomar Observatory, Digitized Sky Survey.

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All images presented in this website are copyrighted © Davide De Martin (2005-2010) otherwise noted. Reproduction or distribution of these images is not permitted without written consent. See also commercial use of the images for further details or email me. Comments are welcome.
The astronomical images presented in this site were created with the help of the ESA/ESO/NASA FITS Liberator.