The ghosts of five supernovas haunt this extraordinary
image.
It was acquired at
Oukaïmeden Observatory in
Morocco with approximately 200 hours of observations and shows a large patch of the sky, equivalent to the
area of one thousand full moons tiled together, in the constellation of
Auriga (the
charioteer).
From left to right, the five supernova remnants visible across the field are
G181.1+9.5,
G182.4+4.3,
G179.0+2.6,
G180.0−1.7 (Sh2-240, the
Spaghetti Nebula), and
G178.2−4.2.
They are highlighted in the
annotated image, together with
open cluster M37 and the
Tadpole Nebula.
As each explosion
expanded into space, it created a growing shell of shocked gas and delicate filamentary structures shown in red (
hydrogen) and blue (
oxygen), respectively.
These ancient stellar explosions h/day/pened independently; they are at various distances up to about several thousands of
light-years away from Earth and have estimated ages up to
tens of thousands of years old.
Early humans may have
witnessed them as bright new stars, fading over weeks or months.