Pan: Veil Nebula

In this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week, Hubble has once again lifted the veil on a famous — and frequently photographed — supernova remnant: the Veil Nebula. This nebula is the remnant of a star roughly 20 times as massive as the Sun that exploded about 10 000 years ago. Situated about 2400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, this photogenic nebula made an appearance as the Picture of the Week previously in 2021.

This view combines images taken in three different filters by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, highlighting emission from hydrogen, sulphur and oxygen atoms. This image shows just a small fraction of the Veil Nebula; if you could see the entire nebula without the aid of a telescope, it would be as wide as six full Moons placed side by side. Look in the sidebar of this page to see this image superimposed on its location in the sky, and try zooming out to compare the size of the full nebula!

Although this image captures the Veil Nebula at just a single point in time, it will help researchers understand how the supernova remnant has evolved over decades. Combining this snapshot with Hubble observations from 1994 will reveal the motion of individual knots and filaments of gas over that span of time, enhancing our understanding of this stunning nebula.