The faint Vela supernova remanant was formed some 11,000 years ago in a supernova explosion. The nebula is thought be at a distance of 800 light years and appears to be embedded in the large Gum Nebula, although the two are considered as separate objects.

The narrow streak near the bottom left corner is the Pencil Nebula (NGC 2736), discovered by John Herschel in the 1830s. The NGC catalog lists it as a galaxy (visually, its appearance is indeed similar to an edge-on galaxy), but it is actually a filament of the Vela SNR with strong O-III emission.

The brightest emission region near the top edge is RCW 33, also known as Gum 17.

Separate four-frame mosaic images were taken through narrow-band (13 nm) H&alpha and O-III (doubly ionized oxygen) filters. The two-color picture was assembled using an approach inspired by Steve Cannistra's bicolor technique. Star sizes reduced by resampling the image 2×, applying a minimum filter, and downsampling it to the original resolution.