"Just the tiniest slice of what's out there: the Pencil Nebula is pictured in an image from the European Southern Observatory's La Silla facility in Chile. This peculiar cloud of glowing gas is part of a huge ring of <a href=""http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1236/"">wreckage left over after a supernova explosion</a> that took place about 11,000 years ago."