ESO Telescope Captures 'Ghost' Of Gigantic Star. See Photo

The Very Large Telescope (VLT), hosted at the ESO's Paranal site in Chile, has captured a beautiful tapestry of colours showing the 'ghost' of a gigantic star.

The 'ghostly' remains constitute the Vela supernova remnant. The image has the appearance of a spooky spider web, and also magical dragons and wispy trails of ghosts. ( Image Source :ESO )

NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and some space observatories have released spooky, ghostly images of celestial objects as part of Halloween celebrations. The most recent one to share an eerie image is the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The Very Large Telescope (VLT), hosted at the ESO's Paranal site in Chile, has captured a beautiful tapestry of colours showing the 'ghost' of a gigantic star. The 'ghostly' remains constitute the Vela supernova remnant. The image has the appearance of a spooky spider web, and also magical dragons and wispy trails of ghosts.

What the image of the Vela supernova remnant means

The only things remaining of the massive star are the wispy structures of pink and orange clouds. The star ended its life in a powerful explosion around 11,000 years ago. When most massive stars reach the end of their life, they often go out with a bang, in an outburst called a supernova, and these explosions cause shock waves that move through the surrounding gas. The shock waves compress the surrounding waves, and create intricate thread-like structures. The gaseous tendrils shine brightly because of being heated by the energy released from the explosions. 

The image captured by VLT is a 554-million-pixel picture that reveals an extremely detailed view of the Vela supernova remnant, named after the southern constellation Vela, meaning 'The Sails'. One can fit nine full Moons in the entire image, and the whole cloud is even larger. The dramatic supernova remnant is located 800 light-years from Earth, and is one of the closest known to us.

More about the Vela supernova remnant

As the progenitor star exploded, its layers were ejected into the surrounding gas, producing the spectacular filaments that can be seen in the image. An ultra-dense ball is one of the ghostly remains of the star. In the ball, protons and neutrons are forced together into neutrons, forming a neutron star. 

According to a statement released by ESO, the neutron star in the Vela remnant is placed slightly outside of the image to the upper left, and happens to be a pulsar that spins on its own axis at an incredible speed of more than 10 times per second. Pulsars are rotating neutron stars observed to have pulses of radiation at very regular intervals. 

The wide-field camera OmegaCAM at VLT made several observations of the Vela supernova remnant. The image is a mosaic of these observations. OmegaCAM is a 268-million-pixel camera that can take images through several filters. These let through light of different colours. Four different filters were used in this image of the Vela remnant. These filters are represented by a combination of magenta, blue, green and red.

The resulting image is an extremely detailed, gorgeous and stunning view of both the gaseous filaments in the remnant and the foreground bright blue stars that add sparkle to the picture.