April 14, 2021
In the time it took you to read this, the Earth moved another thousand miles through space. You are not standing still. You never have been.
The Pencil Nebula Supernova Shock Wave
Birthday · April 14, 2021
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APOD published April 14, 2021. Credit: Greg Turgeon & Utkarsh Mishra. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
This supernova shock wave plows through interstellar space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Near the middle and moving up in this sharply detailed color composite, thin, bright, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a cosmic sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge-on. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its elongated appearance suggests its popular name, the Pencil Nebula. The Pencil Nebula is about 5 light-years long and 800 light-years away, but represents only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant. The Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter, the expanding debris cloud of a star that was seen to explode about 11,000 years ago. Initially, the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour but has slowed considerably, sweeping up surrounding interstellar material. In the featured narrow-band, wide field image, red and blue colors track, primarily, the characteristic glows of ionized hydrogen and oxygen atoms, respectively. Portal Universe: Random APOD Generator
Image credit: Greg Turgeon & Utkarsh Mishra