VY CMa

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the huge nebula of material cast off by the hypergiant star VY Canis Majoris. This nebula is approximately 186 billion miles across.

About the colours

These images are a composite of separate exposures acquired by the WFPC2 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. Several filters were used to sample narrow wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F410M Green: F547M Orange: F656N Red: F1042M

About the data

The Hubble image was created from HST data from proposals: 7304 (R. Humphreys)