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Red spots indicate the brightest features.
The image was produced by a 4-meter telescope in Chile operated under contract with the National Science Foundation. They depict bright ring structures caused by fast-moving material slamming headlong into a lumbering cloud of gas emitted long ago by the same source. The supernova was first seen exploding in 1987, allowing researchers to predict that the remnant would become visible sometime between 1995 and 2010. Making a space ring Material ejected by the supernova is catching up with slower moving, high-density gas emitted some 20,000 years ago, long before the star blew apart, said Arlin Crotts, an astronomy professor at Columbia University. In the intervening millennia, the star emitted a very fast, low-density wind that has been sweeping the old gas ahead and sweeping out space as though with a giant cosmic broom.