My favorite objects in space are nebulas, and through NASA's astronomy picture of the day I discovered yet another - the Pencil Nebula, which is included in the
New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars as number 2736. It is 800 light-years away and a small part of the very large Vela supernova remnant. The nebula itself is from a star that exploded presumably about 11,000 years ago. Originally these visible, billowous salmon-colored ripples moved at very high speeds, but they have come to slow considerably, sweeping up interstellar gas in the process.
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