February 2017 - Picture of the Month
A Widefield View of a Supernova Remnant in Vela
As I told this month's contributor when a contacted him to ask permission to use his work, I liked the idea of an image of the NGC 3372 (I'm a big fan of eta Carinae) this February. Browsing around the internet one of his took my fancy and my mind was made up... until I spotted his amazing image of the Vela supernova remnant!
But he wasn't finished with me! In addition to granting permission, he pointed me at a more recent version he's created using his original and adding Digital Sky Survey (DSS) data, and this is the result.
As you've probably gathered I have a soft spot for nebulosity, but that’s an incredible object by any standard. It's about 250 Parsecs distant and still fills around 8 degrees of the sky, something that's probably taken it 11,000 years!
It's also so large that there are many deep-sky objects within its bounds and many more to be seen in this image. Definitely take a look at the version marked up with DSOs on Rob's website.
I think this is a stunning image (or collection of images, it is a mosaic), but I'll leave it to you to decide which version is your favourite.
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator.
