NASA Zooms In On Massive Supernova Explosion

Some time around the dawn of recorded human history (approximately 8,000 years ago), the night sky will have contained a particularly bright star - glowing with the same intensity as our moon.

This interstellar disco was caused by the explosion of a star some 20-times the size of our own sun - a supernova of such magnitude that its debris is still lighting up a massive section of the universe all these millennia later.

Now, NASA's Hubble Telescope has zoomed in on this cosmic bombsite, the Veil Nebula. At 110 light-years across, the array of colours is created by the "fast-moving blast wave from the ancient explosion [that] is plowing into a wall of cool, denser interstellar gas, emitting light", explain's the Hubble site. "The nebula lies along the edge of a large bubble of low-density gas that was blown into space by the dying star prior to its self-detonation."

Have a browse through the images and video tour to see the devastation, and keep your fingers crossed humanity isn't still around to witness our own Sun explode. 

(Images: Hubble/NASA)