NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the Veil Nebula and produced yet another incredible image of tracers of ionized gas caused due to a supernova explosion. The new image uses new post-processing and highlights different emissions. The previous image was taken in 2015.
For the latest image, the Hubble telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument was used and five different filters were applied. The space agency used post-processing to enhance details of emissions from ionized nitrogen (red), ionized hydrogen, and doubly ionized oxygen (blue).
The Veil Nebula is located 2,100 light-years away from our planet in the constellation of Cygnus (the Swan). The distance is relatively close in astronomical terms. Besides, the latest image shows only a small portion of the nebula, which is a cloud of ionized gas.
The nebula is the visible part of the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant formed by the death of a massive star. The star was 20 times the mass of the Sun and died young, releasing cataclysmic energy. The nebula has also been featured in Hubble’s Cadwell Catalog, a collection of astronomical objects captured by the space telescope and can be seen by amateur astronomers in the night sky.
The Hubble Space telescope has been the prime source of many such marvelous images. Its capabilities have grown immensely in the last 30 years, thanks to new scientific instruments that were fitted during five servicing missions. These missions have also extended the life of the telescope by replacing old parts.
Recently, the space agency also shared an image of the blue dunes on Mars. The dunes surround Mars’ northern polar cap and cover an area as big as Texas, as per NASA. The image shows the areas with cooler temperatures in blue color, while the warm areas in yellow and orange. The image is actually a merger of images taken from December 2002 to November 2004 using the Thermal Emission Imaging System aboard the Mars Odyssey orbiter.
