Object: NGC 2736 Pencil Nebula
The Pencil Nebula in Vela is a remnant of a supernova explosion that occurred about 11.000 years ago. It lies about 800 light years from Earth and spans a distance of about 5 light-years. The shock wave that created the nebula is traveling through space at about 500,000 km/hour, slamming into the interstellar medium and creating the bluish regions, which glow in the light of ionized oxygen, while the surrounding red regions are a cooler ionized hydrogen source.
This image is a collaborative effort between Howard Hedlund of Astro-Physics, Inc. and Dave Jurasevich, with a total exposure time of 42 hours. Processing followed the Modified Bi-Color technique pioneered by Steve Cannistra with H-alpha as the red channel, OIII as the blue channel and a combination of H-alpha/OIII as a synthetic green channel. Star color was added with data from a RGB set.
This image was featured as NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day on 15 July 2016.
- Team: Dave Jurasevich and Howard Hedlund
- Filters: Tru-Balance 5nm Ha, 3nm OIII, 3 nm SII, RGB filter set - Gen 2
- Exposure: Ha/OIII 22 ea x 1800 sec 1x1 bin, RGB 20 ea x 1200 sec 1x1 bin
- Date: April 2015
- Software: CCDStack 2, Photoshop CS5