Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2015

16 SPACE CHRONICLES Earth in the constellation of Cygnus (The Swan), this brightly coloured cloud of glowing debris spans ap- proximately 110 light-years. In 1997, Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) photo- graphed the Veil Nebula, providing detailed views of its structure. Now, overlaying WFPC2 images with new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) data provides even greater detail and al- lows scientists to study how far the nebula has expanded since it was photographed over 18 years ago. Despite the nebula’s complexity and distance from us, the move- ment of some of its delicate struc- tures is clearly visible — particularly Revisiting the Veil Nebula by NASA D eriving its name from its de- licate, draped filamentary structures, the beautiful Veil Nebula is one of the best-known supernova remnants. It formed from the violent death of a star twenty times the mass of the Sun that ex- ploded about 8000 years ago. Locat- ed roughly 2100 light-years from T his image shows a small sec- tion of the Veil Nebula, as it was observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This section of the outer shell of the famous supernova remnant is in a region known as NGC 6960 or — more colloquially — the Witch’s Broom Nebula. [NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team]