April 16, 2024
On your birthday, the Earth completed another orbit — 584 million miles traveled since your last celebration.
Filaments of the Vela Supernova Remnant
Birthday · April 16, 2024
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APOD published April 16, 2024. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
The explosion is over, but the consequences continue. About eleven thousand years ago, a star in the constellation of Vela could be seen to explode, creating a strange point of light briefly visible to humans living near the beginning of recorded history. The outer layers of the star crashed into the interstellar medium, driving a shock wave that is still visible today. The featured image captures some of that filamentary and gigantic shock in visible light. As gas flies away from the detonated star, it decays and reacts with the interstellar medium, producing light in many different colors and energy bands. Remaining at the center of the Vela Supernova Remnant is a pulsar, a star as dense as nuclear matter that spins around more than ten times in a single second. Monday's Eclipse Imagery: Notable Submissions to APOD