Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Vela (Vel)  ·  Contains:  NGC 2736  ·  Pencil Nebula
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NGC 2736 - Pencil Nebula aka. Herschel's Ray, Miles Zhou
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NGC 2736 - Pencil Nebula aka. Herschel's Ray

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NGC 2736 - Pencil Nebula aka. Herschel's Ray, Miles Zhou
Powered byPixInsight

NGC 2736 - Pencil Nebula aka. Herschel's Ray

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Description

NGC 2736 is part of the Vela Supernova Remnant, located in the constellation Vela. It is also called The Pencil Nebula, or alternately Herschel's Ray, after its discoverer.

John Herschel discovered this object at the Cape of Good Hope on 1 March 1835, and described it as "an extraordinary long narrow ray of excessively feeble light". With dimensions of 30' x 7', the nebula's linear appearance triggered its popular name. A relatively bright star, mentioned by Herschel, is immersed in NGC 2736.

NGC 2736 resides about 800 light-years away, and is the brightest patch of the Vela supernova remnant (also known as the Gum Nebula, not shown). Its thin, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge on. The Vela remnant, now around 100 light-years in diameter, is the expanding debris cloud of a star that exploded about 11,000 years ago. Its shock wave, though having slowed considerably, plows through space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour, sweeping up surrounding interstellar gas.

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NGC 2736 - Pencil Nebula aka. Herschel's Ray, Miles Zhou

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