Veil Nebula Supernova Remnant

The Hubble telescope has captured a number of stunning images in its time, and this week yet another fantastic picture was relayed back as it focused in on the Veil Nebula.

In addition to the zoom video, NASA also got busy whipping up some special effects of its own in the video below, which offers 3D animation of what a fly-by of the Veil Nebula would look like.

The entire nebula is 110 light-years across, covering six full moons on the sky as seen from Earth, and resides about 2,100 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan.

Deriving its name from its delicate, draped filamentary structures, the attractive Veil Nebula is one of the best-known supernova remnants.

The star that birthed the Veil Nebula when exploding into a supernova about 8,000 years ago is believed to have been around 20 times more massive than our Sun, which explains why the nebula itself is pretty darn huge. That’s the same camera that was attached to the space telescope during its last servicing mission in 2009, and the same one used to take a clearer, haunting photo of the Pillars of Creation earlier this year.

Eight thousand years ago, our ancestors may have witnessed what seemed like a bright new star in the sky.

“The image shows an incredible array of structures and detail from the collision between the blast wave and gas and dust that make up the cavity wall”, NASA said in a statement. Red is from hydrogen, green from sulfur and blue from oxygen.