I was excited to see how this one would turn out, as I don’t normally target these kinds of objects. Supernova remnants tend to be too small for my current wide-field setup, but this object at 5 thousand light years is close enough to subtend an angle of 50 arcminutes in the sky, which is large enough for me to capture in some detail. The nebula itself is approx. 70 light years across.
A supernova remnant is what you get when a star explodes. Usually the debris from such an explosion will expand outwards in the form of a shell of material. The shape of the shell will depend on the dynamics of the explosion, and the influence of other objects in the vicinity. Radiation from stars can interact with the expanding shock wave, producing a complex mess of additional shock waves and magnetic fields that reverberate around the nebula. All of this activity produces twists, folds and filaments that can sometimes resemble the sinewy threads of organic tissue. Often the explosion leaves behind a dense, rapidly spinning neutron star, called a pulsar.
The object shown here bears a striking resemblance to the delicate form of a jellyfish, swimming through the cosmos. It does, in fact, contain a pulsar, situated in the top left section of the nebula – i.e. the bell-shaped part of the jellyfish. The creature’s graceful anatomy has been shaped over time by interactions with nearby molecular clouds, such as the huge hydrogen wall that looks like it’s protruding from the top of the jellyfish.
Explosions of the kind that gave birth to the Jellyfish are the means by which atoms are manufactured and distributed into the cosmos – a process essential for the development of planetary systems and the evolution of life. Without these nebulae, we wouldn’t exist.
