The Veil Nebula formed about 8,000 years ago after the death of a star 20 times the size of the Sun in a supernova explosion. Now, a new set of Hubble Telescope videos reveal clear images of its violent beauty. The explosion, lightning fast, plowed into a wall of cool, dense interstellar gas, emitting light. The Nebula is along the edge of a large bubble of low-density gas that was blown into space by the dying star before it exploded.

The remnants of the destroyed star are multicolored and stunning, showing a colorful cloud of material that is 110 light years wide and about 2,100 light years from Earth. It’s located in the constellation called Cygnus, or The Swan Nebula.

Where Does the Color Come From?

According to the European Space Agency, …show more content…
This section of the outer shell of the famous supernova remnant is in a region known as NGC 6960 or — more colloquially — the Witch’s Broom Nebula.
This image shows a small section of the Veil Nebula, as it was observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This section of the outer shell of the famous supernova remnant is in a region known as NGC 6960 or — more colloquially — the Witch’s Broom Nebula.
The new footage comes from six combined Hubble images, showing only two years of the massive cloud.

The Hubble Telescope photographed the Veil Nebula in 1997, taken by Hubble’s WIde Field and Planetary Camera 2, while the newer images were taken by the Wide Field Camera 3, initially installed in 2009. The new images show an expansion to the Nebula in the past 18, and NASA asserts it will continue to expand as more time passes.

The light show produced by the gas plowing into cooler, more dense interstellar gas shows an array of color. The blues in the images contain hotter gas and ionized oxygen, while the glowing greens come from ionized sulfur and reds indicate glowing ionized hydrogen, according to