This is the large Vela Supernova Remnant – visible here as the mostly cyan wisps and strands of starstuff from a star that exploded about 11,000 years
This is the large Vela Supernova Remnant – visible here as the mostly cyan wisps and strands of starstuff from a star that exploded about 11,000 years ago when it was about 900 light years away. It would have been a spectacular sight in our sky at that time. The nebula carries the designation of Gum 16, from the 1955 catalogue of Australian astronomer Colin S. Gum. The most distinct fragment of the Vela SNR visually is the Pencil Nebula, aka Herschel's Ray, or NGC 2736, the straight slash at left of centre. The field, which measures 10º by 15º, contains several other Gum objects: at upper left is the large H-alpha region Gum 17 bisected by a dark lane SL4; the smaller circular patch above it is Gum 15; while the large diffuse nebula at top and cut off is RCW27, with the small NGC 2626 embedded in it. Below Gum 17 is the tiny RCW34 and larger and red RCW36 below it. Below the Pencil Nebula is the red Gum 23 or RCW 38. The yellow star at upper left is Suhail, or Lambda Velorum. The blue star in the upper right corner is Naos, or Zeta Puppis. The blue star at lower right is Regor, aka Suhail al Muhlif, or Gamma Velorum, a hot blue giant star and one of the most luminous stars in the sky with an intrinsic brightness of some 180,000 Suns. This is a stack of 15 x 2-minute exposures with the Canon RF135mm lens at f/2 on the Canon Ra at ISO 1000. It was tracked but not autoguided on the Astro-Physics AP 400 mount, taken March 12, 2024 from near Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia. The only filter employed was a mild broadband filter, an 82mm URTH Night filter on the front of the lens. Nebulosity was brought out in processing using luminosity masked curves layers applied to a starless image layer created with RC-Astro StarXTerminator plug-in. Additional enhancements with the PhotoKemi Nebula Filter action and a Detail Extractor effect from the Nik Collection Color EFX plug-in.
Size: 6720px × 4480px
Photo credit: © Alan Dyer / VWPics / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 15, 16, 17, 27, 33, 34, 35, 36, 2024, 2626, 2659, 2736, astronomy, astrophotographer, astrophotography, australia, beauty, bodies, canon, catalogue, celestial, clusters, colin, collection, constellations, cosmic, dark, deep, detail, emission, equipment, exploration, exposure, extractor, galaxy, gamma, gear, gum, herschels, interstellar, long, lumenzia, lunar, march, milky, moon, naos, nebula, ngc, night, nightscape, nik, pencil, phenomena, photography, photokemi, planetary, ra, ray, rcw, regor, remnant, rf135mm, settings, sky, skywatching, snr, space, star, stargazing, starry, stars, suhail, supernova, techniques, telescope, tips, trails, universe, urth, vela, velorum, warrumbungles, xterminator
