The thumbnail above is but a tiny portion of an awe inspiring, one Gigapixel image available to view and explore in full at Sky Factory:

About 11,000 years ago a star in the constellation of Vela exploded. This bright supernova may have been visible to the first human farmers. Today the Vela supernova remnant marks the position of a relatively close and recent explosion in our Milky Way Galaxy. A roughly spherical, expanding shock wave is visible in X-rays. In the optical photograph shown here, the 100+ light-years span spherical blast wave is shown in detail. As gas flies away from the detonated star, it reacts with the interstellar medium, knocking away closely held electrons from even heavy elements. When the electrons recombine with these atoms, light in many different colors and energy bands is produced...

...NGC 2736 is the Pencil Nebula, a shockwave expanding through interstellar space at 500,000 kilometers per hour. The Pencil Nebula is part of the Vela Supernova Remnant. Initially the shockwave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour, but the weight of all the gas it has swept up has slowed it considerably. - link

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