Astronomers spot ghostly images of star that 'died' 11,000 years ago

Astronomers have found the ghostly remains of a gigantic star that ended its life in a massive explosion 11,000 years ago. The image captured by the astronomers at the European Southern Observatory in the VLT Survey Telescope shows a wispy structure of pink and orange clouds. The explosion caused shock waves that move through the surrounding gas, compressing it and creating intricate thread-like structures.

The star is believed to have had a mass of a minimum of eight times greater than our sun before the explosion occurred. It is located in our Milky Way galaxy about 800 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Vela. The 554-million-pixel image shows a clear view of the Vela supernova remnant, named after the southern constellation Vela.

The remains of the star are spread over an expanse roughly 600 times larger than our solar system. The outermost layers of the progenitor star ejected into the surrounding gas, making the spectacular filaments that can be seen in the recently captured image. An ultra-dense ball with protons and electrons is forced together into neutrons remaining of the star. 

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Bruno Leibundgut, an astronomer affiliated with the European Southern Observatory (ESO), "The filamentary structure is the gas that was ejected from the supernova explosion, which created this nebula. We see the inside material of a star as it expands into space. When there are denser parts, some of the supernova material shocks with the surrounding gas and creates some of the filamentary structure."

The star itself has been reduced in the aftermath of the supernova to an incredibly dense spinning object called a pulsar. A pulsar is a type of neutron star - one of the most compact celestial objects known to exist. This one rotates 10 times per second.

"Most of the material that shines is due to hydrogen atoms that are excited. The beauty of such images is that we can directly see what material was inside a star. The material that has been built up over many millions of years is now exposed and will cool down over millions of years until it eventually will form new stars," Leibundgut added.