The Hubble Space Telescope captured rare images of a star that exploded nearly 8,000 years ago leaving behind floating remnants of the shattered star. The star was located more than 2,000 light years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan.

The recent images by the Hubble reveals the complex beauty of the dead star that has been left behind and is one of the most violent events in the universe.

The Veil Nebula is so far one of the best known supernova remnants in the sky, featuring vast delicate structures of hot plasma some 110 light-years across. The nebula is located around 2,100 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan.

Hubble in its recent observations features six images stitched together as a mosaic. The zoomed-in images provides very detailed look at the innermost detail of the dead star.

According to experts, the Veil's brightest components are formed by the ancient supernova's shock wave that travel through interstellar space, blasting into the edge of a cavity, or bubble, etched out into a region of cool interstellar gas.

The wrinkled structure of the expanding bubble's leading edge glows in a range of vivid colors, heated by the interaction between the shock waves and cavity gas. These colors represent the superheated glow of various different gases in the cavity wall.

Red color in the Veil is the glow of hydrogen; green is sulfur; blue is oxygen, said experts. The more diffuse glow is caused by cooler gases that were heated by the travelling shock waves in the past.

Observations of the Veil are also of great scientific value. Astronomers are presently comparing the past and present images of the nebula's structure to see how it has changed over the past couple of decades.