The nebula is about 1,500 light years away. Clusters of incandescent dust and gas light up intensely in this ultraviolet image of the Cygnus Loop Nebula, taken from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The nebula is about 1,500 light years away and is a supernova remnant left by a massive stellar explosion that occurred between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago.
The Cycle of the Cycle extends over three times the size of the full moon in the night sky, and is hidden next to one of the "swan's wings" in the constellation of the Swan. The filaments of gas and dust visible here in ultraviolet light were heated by the supernova shock wave, which is still spreading outward from the original explosion.
The original supernova would have been bright enough to be seen clearly from the Earth with the naked eye. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena drives the Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission and is responsible for scientific operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, manages the mission and builds the scientific instrument.
The mission was developed as part of the NASA Explorers program run by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Researchers sponsored by Yonsei University in South Korea and the Center National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France have collaborated on this MISSION
. Credits: nasa.gov/galex/ and http://www.galex.caltech.edu.
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