The Cygnus Loop

This image shows a small portion of a nebula called the ‘Cygnus Loop.’ Covering a region on the sky six times the diameter of the full Moon, the Cygnus Loop is actually the expanding blastwave from a stellar cataclysm - a supernova explosion - which occurred about 15, 000 years ago.

Credit: Jeff Hester (Arizona State University) and NASA/ESA