Eleven thousand years ago, a star exploded in the constellation Vela, blowing off its outer layers in a spectacular shock wave that remains visible today. Today’s image is a piece of a 1.3-gigapixel composite image of the supernova remnant, captured by the Dark Energy Camera of the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Below is a labeled version of the image, identifying the original star — now a fast-spinning pulsar that packs our sun’s mass into an object only kilometers across — its shock wave, and other features. To explore the full-sized image, see NOIRLab. (Image credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA; via Colossal)
