July 1, 2008—Like a ribbon trailing from a parade float, a streamer of hydrogen gas seems to waft across the stars in a new image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The structure is part of the remains of a stellar explosion that happened more than a thousand years ago. The blast wave from the supernova is still traveling at about 6 million miles (9.6 million kilometers) an hour, heating gases along its path that emit radiation in visible light.

Bright stripes within the ribbon (colorized to appear red) appear where the shock wave is moving edge-on to Hubble's line of sight.

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