Candy-colored atoms shine in new image of the Veil Nebula

The star that exploded to create this cosmic wonder was about 20 times bigger than our sun. The post Candy-colored atoms shine in new image of the Veil Nebula appeared first on Popular Science.

Mar 3, 2025 - 21:29

Candy-colored atoms shine in new image of the Veil Nebula

As it nears 35 consecutive years of space service, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken another look at a famous supernova remnant. The Veil Nebula is roughly 2,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. It is the remnants of a star that was roughly 20 times as big as our sun and exploded about 10,000 years ago.

A colorful, glowing nebula that reaches beyond the top and bottom of the image. It is made of translucent clouds of gas: wispy and thin with hard edges in some places, and puffy and opaque in others. Blue, red and yellow colours mix together, showing light emitted by different types of atoms in the hot gas. Bright and pointlike stars are scattered across the nebula. The background is black — *This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a supernova remnant called the Veil Nebula.* *Blue, red, and yellow colors mix together, showing light emitted by different types of atoms in the hot gas.*
*CREDIT: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Sankrit*
ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Sankrit

This colorful new view combines images that were taken in three different filters by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and highlights hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen atoms. It is showing only a tiny fraction of the Veil Nebula, which is roughly as wide as six of Earth’s moons placed side by side. Hubble has previously snapped images of this nebula in 1994, 1997, and 2015.

three images of a nebula with red, yellow, blue, and pink swirls on a black background — *Images of the Veil Nebula taken in November 1994 and again in August 1997. CREDIT:*
*NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration; Acknowledgment: J. Hester (Arizona State University)*

pink, yellow, blue, and white light streams out of a super nova on a black background — This view is a mosaic of six Hubble pictures of a small area roughly two light-years across, covering only a tiny fraction of the nebula’s vast structure. The images were taken April 14-17, 2015. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Project.

This new image was taken at a single point in time, but still helps astronomers understand how it has evolved over the past three decades. Combining this image with Hubble observations that were taken in 1994 reveal how individual knots and filaments of gas move over time.

This year, space enthusiasts can also take part in NASA and the Astronomical League’s Hubble’s Night Sky Challenge. Each month, Hubble scientists will release the following month’s list of objects for astrophotographers to photograph. All of the targets from the challenge are visible from Earth, primarily with a telescope or binoculars. The challenge has previously asked observers to observe M1 the Crab Nebula and C39 the Clown Nebula.

For March, skygazers in the Northern Hemisphere are encouraged to look at M44 (aka the Beehive Cluster), the open cluster M48, M67 or the King Cobra/Golden Eye Cluster, and the spiral galaxy C48. Those in the Southern Hemisphere are encouraged to look for planetary nebula C90 in addition to the four cosmic objects listed for the Northern Hemisphere.

Since it first launched on April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has taken more than 1.5 million observations and been featured in over 20,000 scientific papers.

The post Candy-colored atoms shine in new image of the Veil Nebula appeared first on Popular Science.