Zooming in on the Pencil Nebula

This video starts with a wide field view of the spectacular southern part of the Milky Way. We close in gradually on a large bubble-shaped region of glowing gas in the constellation of Vela (The Sails). This is the Vela supernova remnant, gas clouds that were ejected from a dying star in a huge explosion about 11 000 years ago. The final detailed view comes from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile.