Please Pass the Marinara – The Spaghetti Nebula (Sh2-240, Simeis 147)

The Spaghetti Nebula is a supernova remnant (the remains of an exploded star) some 3,000 light years from Earth and 160 light years wide toward the Taurus constellation. It’s extremely faint and difficult to shoot, but well worth the effort.

Scientists think the supernova occurred around 40,000 years ago. Aside from the curls of red hydrogen and blue oxygen gasses visible in the image, it left behind a pulsar—a neutron star rapidly spinning six to seven times per second. It’s an object made of exotic matter the size of a city with the mass of the sun that rotates every 143 milliseconds! You can’t make this stuff up.

The Spaghetti Nebula is catalogued as Sh2-240, Sim 147, and SNR G180.8–02.2. Discovered by Russian scientists G.A. Shajn and V.E. Hase discovered it in 1952 while doing research at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory. In the early 20th century, amateur astronomer Nikolai Maltzov built a private observatory near the village of Simeiz in Crimea. In 1945, the Soviet government expanded the facility into what is now called the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory. In the 1950s, the observatory published a number of lists of emission objects that are now collectively known as the Simeis Catalogue (“Sim”).

Little Sh2-242 is tucked into the lower-left corner. It’s an emission nebula roughly 8,800 light years from Earth.