(ORDO NEWS) — The Parusa supernova remnant was photographed with the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile.
This 554-million-pixel image shows the supernova remnant in Parusa, just 800 light-years from Earth, in extreme detail.
A fine structure of pink and orange clouds is all that remains of a massive star that exploded about 11,000 years ago.
As a result of the supernova explosion, the outermost layers of the progenitor star were ejected into the surrounding gas, resulting in the formation of bright filaments, which we can see in the picture.
The neutron star is located outside of this image. It is a pulsar that rotates around its axis at an incredible speed – more than 10 times per second.
This image is a mosaic of observations taken with the OmegaCAM Wide Field Camera on the VST Survey Telescope.
The 268 million pixel camera can take pictures with multiple filters of different colors. Four filters were used to create this image: magenta, blue, green, and red.
VST is owned by the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics and, thanks to its 2.6-meter mirror, is one of the largest telescopes designed to observe the night sky in visible light.
This image is an example of the VST Photometric Hα Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+).
Over seven years of this research, a significant portion of our galaxy has been mapped, allowing astronomers to better understand how stars form, evolve and die.
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