Pencil Nebula looks like `celestial witch’s broom` in new image

Washington -  A new image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile shows the Pencil Nebula against a rich starry background  looking like a witch’s broom.

This oddly shaped cloud, which is also known as NGC 2736, is a small part of a supernova remnant [2] in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sails).

These glowing filaments were created by the violent death of a star that took place about 11,000 years ago. The brightest part resembles a pencil; hence the name, but the whole structure  looks rather more like a traditional witch’s broom.

The Vela supernova remnant is an expanding shell of gas that originated from the supernova explosion. Initially the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometres per hour, but as it  expanded through space it ploughed through the gas between the stars, which has slowed it considerably and created strangely shaped folds of nebulosity.

The Pencil Nebula is the brightest part of this huge shell.

The new image shows large, wispy filamentary structures, smaller bright knots of gas and patches of diffuse gas.

The nebula’s luminous appearance comes from dense gas regions that have been struck by the supernova shock wave. As the shock wave travels through space, it rams into the interstellar

material.

At first, the gas was heated to millions of degrees, but it then subsequently cooled down and is still giving off the faint glow that was captured in the new image.

By looking at the different colours of the nebula, astronomers have been able to map the temperature of the gas.

Some regions are still so hot that the emission is dominated by ionized oxygen atoms, which glow blue in the picture. Other cooler regions are seen glowing red, due to emission from

hydrogen.

The Pencil Nebula measures about 0.75 light-year across and is moving through the interstellar medium at about 650,000 kilometres per hour.

Remarkably, even at its distance of approximately 800 light-years from Earth, this means that it will noticeably change its position relative to the background stars within a human lifetime.

Even after 11,000 years the supernova explosion is still changing the face of the night sky.