About 8,000 years ago, this would have appeared as a red star in the sky, brighter than Venus.
The star exploded and the resulting shockwaves are still expanding at about 1.4 million miles per hour. Put differently, a month from now, this nebula will have expanded by a billion miles.
Because this expansion has been occurring for some time (~8,000 years), the Veil nebula is very large...you would have to travel at the speed of light for 110 years to get from one side to the other.
This photo took 7 hours to capture, with the majority of the light coming through special "narrowband" astrophotography filters. These filters allow only certain wavelengths of light to hit the camera and let us see the incredible detail from the nebular gasses (hydrogen, sulfur, & oxygen).
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