'Surprising astronomical beauty': Hubble's revisited image reveals Veil Nebula in detail

On Saturday,  NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope revisited the Veil Nebula's exotic imagery bringing out more stunning features and intricate details of the tattered remains of an ancient supernova explosion. The telescope reconstructed the structures of the Veil Nebula, a gossamer remnant of a larger supernova remnant called the Cygnus Loop that was about 20 times the mass of the sun nearly10,000 years ago. NASA's  Hubble Space Telescope released the image of the 8000-year-old debris in 2015, which was taken with its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. And recently, the space agency expanded the details of one of the best-known supernova remnants, deriving its name from its delicate, draped filamentary structures. 

"The Veil Nebula lies around 2,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus (the Swan), making it a relatively close neighbor in astronomical terms," NASA explained, adding that at the time when the original image was taken only a small portion of the nebula was captured.  Veil nebula covers the expanse as large as six full moons in the sky when seen from Earth, and resides about 2,100 light-years away in the Cygnus constellation. The image released shows 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 fast-moving blast wave from the ancient explosion is plowing into a wall of cool, denser interstellar gas, emitting light. The nebula lies along the edge of a large bubble of low-density gas that was blown into space by the dying star prior to its self-detonation," NASA said in a release. 

Formed from death of 'massive star'

"Formed from the death of a massive star about 20 times the size of our Sun, the Veil Nebula proves that surprising astronomical beauty can come from stellar violence," NASA wrote in an Instagram post, sharing the mystical photograph. It added, that the newly processed image shows the sculpted delicate tracery of ionized gases in the Veil nebula that are created from the shockwaves and debris from the supernova. Veil nebula was formed by the death of a massive star, NASA explained, adding that those stars had short life expectancy and they died young, ending their life in a cataclysmic release of energy. The new close-up enhances the features of the wisps of gases, which, according to scientists are the remains of what was once a star 20 times more massive than our sun. The iconic image of the Veil Nebula is also featured in Hubble’s Caldwell Catalog, a collection of astronomical objects visible in the night sky to the astronomers. 

(Image Credit: NASA)