Cannonball Star

A stellar corpse is racing away from its "birthplace" at more than two million miles per hour, leaving a glowing trail in its wake. In this composite image, the star is the bright orange streak at the lower left of the large bubble, which is the expanding residue of an exploding star called a supernova. The star's core was crushed to incredible density, forming a heavy, rapidly rotating object known as a pulsar. The blast gave the object a big "kick," pushing it fast enough to allow it to someday escape the Milky Way Galaxy. Astronomers have nicknamed it the "cannonball pulsar." [Jayanne English (Univ. Manitoba)/F. Schinzel et al.; NRAO/AUI/NSF; DRAO/Canadian Galactic Plane Survey; NASA/IRAS]