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About 120 centuries ago an inconspicuous star in what is now the constellation of Vela brightened by about 100 million times to rival the Moon as the brightest object in the night sky. This photograph shows a portion of the north-western quadrant of an expanding nebulous shell, which now surrounds the site of the explosion. Near the centre of the nebula (and not seen here) is the Vela pulsar, a rapidly-spinning neutron star only a few kilometres in diameter, the remnant of the star that exploded. This tiny object spins about 11 times a second and until recently was among the faintest stars ever studied at optical wavelengths, a far cry from its brief glory as one of the brightest stars ever seen.
Image and text copyright © Anglo-Australian Observatory/Royal Observatory Edinburgh. All rights reserved. Photograph by David Malin. |
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