NASA lifts the veil on the corpse of a star about 20 times as big as the Sun

The corpse of a dead star approximately 20 times the size of our Sun has been showcased by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

In a new post on the ESA's X account, the space agency explains how the Hubble Space Telescope has been used to lift the veil on the supernova remnant known as the "Veil nebula". According to the ESA's website listing for the image the Veil Nebula was a star that was approximately 20 times the size of our Sun that sadly came to the end of its life about 10,000 years ago. The star ended its life in a fiery and cataclysmic explosion, leaving behind the incredible remnants we are observing today from 2,400 light-years away.

The Veil Nebula is located in the constellation Cygnus, and the above image is comprised of three different filters by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. The instrument has captured only a small fraction of the Veil Nebula and has highlighted some of its most prominent components, such as the presence of hydrogen, sulphur, and oxygen atoms. Researchers estimate if a person was looking at the Veil Nebula without a telescope ,it would be about as large as six full Moons placed side by side.

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"It is made of translucent clouds of gas: wispy and thin with hard edges in some places, and puffy and opaque in others. Blue, red and yellow colours mix together, showing light emitted by different types of atoms in the hot gas. Bright and pointlike stars are scattered across the nebula," writes the ESA about the Veil Nebula