A giant ghostly bird

The Vela constellation is visible with the naked eye in the southern sky, but you might miss a lot of details hidden there, like those shown in this Picture of the Week. This is a small patch of the Vela supernova remnant, the intricate leftovers of the explosion of a massive star 11 000 years ago. This image is part of a huge and detailed mosaic captured with the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Chilean desert.

Pink and orange filamentary clouds swarm around in this picture, resembling the ghostly shadow of a cosmic bird with wide orange wings, a long pink body, and a bright pinkish star as an eye. A myriad of stars are sprinkled all over the image.

When massive stars reach the end of their life they explode as supernovae, expelling their outer layers. These explosions send out shock waves that move through the surrounding gas, compressing and reshaping it. This is what creates the intricate structure of filaments seen here, which shine brightly because of the energy released during the explosion.