Part of The Veil Nebula in Cygnus: A Supernova Remnant | Hubble

Part of The Veil Nebula in Cygnus: A Supernova Remnant | Hubble

In this NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope picture, 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 twenty times as massive as the Sun that exploded about 10,000 years ago. It is located about 2,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus.

This view combines images taken in three 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.

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.

Image Description: A colorful, glowing nebula that reaches beyond the top and bottom of the image. It is made of translucent clouds of gas: wispy and thin with hard edges in some places, and puffy and opaque in others. Blue, red and yellow colors mix together, showing light emitted by different types of atoms in the hot gas. Bright and pointlike stars are scattered across the nebula. The background is black.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Sankrit
Image Date: Feb. 24, 2025

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