Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2024

22 MAY-JUNE 2024 ASTRO PUBLISHING S ome of the most interesting objects found within the new 1.3 gigapixel Vela Supernova Remnant image, captured with the Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. [CTIO/NOIR- Lab/DOE/NSF/AURA. Image Processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/ NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Za- mani & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab)] the stringy blue and yellow filaments seen in the image. The Vela Supernova Remnant is a gigantic structure, spanning almost 100 light-years and extend- ing to twenty times the diameter of the full Moon in the night sky. Despite the dramatics of the star’s final mo- ments, it wasn’t en- tirely wiped from ex- istence. After shedding its outer layers, the core of the star col- lapsed into a neutron star — an ultra-dense ball consisting of pro- tons and electrons that have been smashed together to form neu- trons. The neutron star, named the Vela Pulsar, is now an ultra-con- densed object with the mass of a star like the Sun contained in a sphere just a few kilometers across. Located in the lower left region of this image, the Vela Pulsar is a rela- tively dim star that is indistinguish- able from its thousands of celestial neighbors. Still reeling from its ex- plosive death, the Vela Pulsar spins