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This object is called the Veil Nebula.

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I think because of its sort of
diaphanous appearance here, you can see

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through parts of it,
but parts of it are very intricate,

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like a veil.

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And I think this is one of the more iconic

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of Hubble images for sure,
because it's absolutely gorgeous.

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It's the result of a supernova explosion,
a small piece

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of the resulting nebula that came,
that was caused by the supernova.

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This is in the constellation Cygnus.

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It's part of a very much more massive
structure.

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Supernovas tend to blow material out
relatively spherically symmetric.

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And you look at this and say, well,
that's a linear feature.

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You know, I don't I don't get it.

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It's just that
we're looking at a very tiny piece of

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of this entire circle
that's caused by the supernova.

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In this
image, we've backed off a little bit.

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What you saw before was just
a little piece of the area over here.

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This bright star at
the center is called 52 Cygni.

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So that entire large circle
is what we call the Cygnus Loop.

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This is a area on the western side
that is glowing very brightly.

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There are other areas of the circle
where material is glowing.

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There's an Eastern veil
and some other areas in the north and south.

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This is perhaps
the prettiest portion of the Cygnus Loop.

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You can see why
we've chosen to go in an image it.

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The overall loop that we're talking about
is something like 65 light years across.

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It's absolutely huge on the sky.

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The width of an individual filament
like this is something way

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smaller, comparable to the distance
from the Earth to Pluto

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is the scale you're seeing here.

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This long, thin filament

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glowing with all sorts
of different colors, which means different

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temperatures of material,
different elements, giving off the light.

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And you can just see that

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there's so much energy
and so much material in this little arc.

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The process of this explosion
sending out material

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and having this material hit
preexisting material

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in the interstellar medium leads
to all this complicated interaction.

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And you're getting this afterglow.

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You also have next to it

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this region of star formation,
where we have a very dark cloud.

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You see very little background
light getting through this area. 

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See a little bit of material

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evaporating off this dark cloud
caused by the bright stars below it.

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But you have this area,
the stellar nursery above to the left,

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and you have this remnant of a star

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in the process of dying from the supernova
explosion right next to it.

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So you have birth and death
in the same image.

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Take the highest resolution
version of this image

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and start blowing it up on your computer
and looking at it.

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You can find cool
things all over the place.