The explosion is over but the consequences continue. About 11,000 years ago a star in the constellation of Vela could be seen to explode, creating a strange point of light
briefly visible to humans living near the beginning of recorded history. The outer layers of the star formed a cloud of expanding debris crashing into the interstellar medium,
and driving a shock wave that is still visible today. The above image captures some of that filamentary and gigantic shock in visible light. As gas flies away from the detonated star,
it decays and reacts with the interstellar medium, producing light in many different colors and energy bands. The cosmic catastrophe also left behind an incredibly dense,
rotating stellar core, the Vela Pulsar, a star as dense as nuclear matter that rotates completely around more than ten times in a single second.
Some 800 light-years distant, the Vela remnant is likely embedded in a larger and older supernova remnant, the Gum Nebula
(ref: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100910.html) (ref. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap131001.html).

Daten zum Bild