This image captures the remnants of two faint overlapping supernova explosions, Puppis A and Vela, located in the southern constellation of Puppis at a declination of -43 degrees. My image is a HOO palette with RGB stars.
The Puppis A SNR is about 4200 light years away and is about one degree is apparent diameter, while the Vela SNR is closer to us and is about 6 degrees in diameter. This image, one degree across, is centered on the Puppis A SNR. The upper right corner of the Vela SNR appears in the lower left part of this image. See my image
here for the full Vela SNR.
The Puppis A SNR fits well within this field of view, although you would never know it by looking at this image. All we see are fragments which are difficult to interpret. Fortunately, this SNR is one of the brightest SNRs in the X-Ray band. The mouseover shows the best published X-ray image of the Puppis SNR . Obviously the optical view does not map very well to the X-ray image.
A 2015 paper ("Age and distance of Puppis A revised - the supernova remnant of the Star of Bethlehem") estimated the age of the Puppis A SNR to be about 2000 years and the peak apparent magnitude to be -7. The author speculates on the possibility that this event could be the "Star of Bethlehem", given its magnitude, timing and location in the southern sky, but critically there are no historical astronomical records which correlate exactly with this event. Other sources put the SNR at an older age, up to 4000 years ago.
A hypervelocity neutron star (RX J0822-4300) within Puppis A known as the Cosmic Cannonball is located within this image field of view. The star is moving away from the center of the Puppis A SNR at over 3 million miles per hour, making it one of the fastest moving stars ever found. Alas, neutron stars are tiny and do not show up in any optical images, including this one.
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